Fall 2013: Bilbao

Greetings from Bilbao, Spain -- or, more to the locals’ taste, from Bilbao, Euskadi (Basque Country).  Euskadi is an autonomous community of northern Spain, centered in Bilbao but stretching as far east as San Sebastian and as far south as Logroño. The larger Basque region also includes Navarra here in Spain and the Pays Basques in southwestern France. It would like to be independent, and is the home of the ETA movement with which you may be familiar.

But enough of geography for now. Jerome and I left home yesterday to catch an afternoon Delta flight from Salt Lake City to Paris, and despite a two-hour delay in departure, managed to make our connecting flight in Charles DeGaulle with seconds to spare, to arrive in Bilbao as scheduled. Sadly, our luggage did not make the French connection, but we are assured that it is on its way on the evening flight.

So, here we are back in Spain. This trip’s itinerary will keep us in north central Spain, first westward from Bilbao along the coast, then south to León, east to Tafalla, then back north to Bilbao for some day trips eastward along the coast. This is a shorter trip than usual for Jerome, who will fly stateside on September 27th. I will head east into the Catalonian Pyrenees, for a three-week artist residency at the Centre d’Art i Natura (http://www.farreracan.cat/) in the tiny town of Farrera, returning home on October 18th.

As is evident, I’ll be sending my traditional travel notes, complete with photos as soon as we get a night’s sleep and I can focus. We had a lovely large Spanish meal late this afternoon, and are planning to stay awake until our luggage arrives in another hour or two. Tomorrow we will head out to explore Bilbao, with the first stop the Guggenheim Museum.

Bilbao

A short walk from our hotel on Thursday afternoon led us to the restaurant Serantes II for our first dinner back in Spain. Jerome started with a delicious garbanzo soup, followed with piquillos (small, sweet red peppers) rellenos (stuffed) de pescado (with minced fish). My eggs-and-wild-mushroom appetizer was followed by ternera (thinly sliced beef) with gravy and fresh vegetables. Flan and natillas (soft custard with cinnamon sprinkled on top) finished the meal. After naps, and the delivery of our luggage, we ventured out again after dark in search of tapas. We found a great place with good cured Spanish jamón, and indulged. We slept very well that night!

Our first full day in Spain began with breakfast at the Olimpia, a local corner coffee and wine bar, with tapas set out for breakfast as well as any snack thereafter for the rest of the day and night. Have some cured jamón on a piece of crusty bread and call it breakfast in the morning (with coffee) or a tapa at night (with wine): It all works.

Our next outing took us past, and then into, the Alhóndiga Bilbao. Originally a huge wine warehouse built in 1909, it was abandoned in 1970, then redesigned in 2010 by Philippe Starck into a public space that includes shops, a fitness center, restaurants, and a public library. We were enchanted by the integrity of the original exterior with the contemporary interior. The public library was ultra modern and very welcoming. The original supporting columns on the ground floor of the warehouse have been wrapped in imaginative sculptures. I’ll send a few photos; it is hard to describe.

We had initially set out for the Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum, the primary impetus for Bilbao’s modernization from a grotty port city into the vital urban center that it is now. We finally got there, and it exceeded our expectations. The architecture is nothing less than spectacular, and indeed the gallery exhibits all paled in comparison. The one exception was Richard Serra’s “The matter of time”, an installation of eight pieces of torqued steel ellipses that must each be at least twenty feet tall. I had seen a film about its creation; to walk through it in person was an event of a lifetime.

We walked along the river promenade around into the oldest part of the city, called “Siete Calles” for its original seven streets, which are very narrow and now mostly pedestrian. We found a restaurant that Jerome had researched, and were delighted to be welcomed in by a waiter who, it turned out, loves the U.S. Although he has only been to NYC, Antonio intends to go back next year, rent a car, and travel all of the old Route 66. We warned him that he’d have a hard time finding food that compared with that of Las Delicias. Our meal consisted of a watercress salad with walnuts and goat cheese, jamón con melón, grilled striped bass, grilled hake, and profiteroles for dessert.

On our way home, we passed the train station, from which we will rent our car tomorrow before heading west along the coast. It is also the departure point for my train to Catalonia in two weeks. Reverting to our normal schedule for days in Spain, we got back to the hotel about 6, rested for a couple of hours, then wandered out again in search of our evening meal. We got lost a few times, but eventually found “La Mary” and had a light supper. We feel fully acclimated.

Ribadesella

We were a bit reluctant to leave Bilbao so soon, but we will have at least two more nights there at the end of the trip, and reservations at Tito Bustillo (paleolithic cave art) await us. So after a lovely breakfast in a pastry shop near the hotel yesterday, we packed up and wheeled our suitcases down to the train station and the Europcar office. Our rental car is a shiny little silver Fiat 500, about as small as a car can get, but easy to maneuver on medieval streets!

This north coast west of Bilbao is green and mountainous; the famous Picos de Europa wilderness area is along here, just inland. The Atlantic stretches to the north as far as the eye can see. Storm clouds yesterday and this morning created a wonderfully atmospheric view, and this afternoon we have sunshine. Our hotel, the Ribadesella Playa, is right on the beach promenade of this little town (population 6,000). The Sella river rises in the Picos and empties here into the sea; the older part of town is on the east bank (ribera), while the west bank contains the mansions of the Indianos -- the name given to 19th-century Spaniards who went to the Americas, became wealthy, and returned. The group here all went to Cuba, as far as we can tell, got wealthy on tobacco, and came home to Asturias.  The Ribadesella Playa is in just such a mansion, now converted to a modern hotel. We slept to the sound of the surf last night.

Today is the big event of our trip, the visit to Tito Bustillo, a cave discovered by college-age spelunkers in 1968 that is one of the most significant finds of Paleolithic cave art anywhere. Our reservation for a restricted tour (they are concerned about preserving the paintings) is at 5 o’clock. I will report on it tomorrow.

For now, we are resting up for the adventure and recovering from a most memorable midday meal at El Albidel, justifiably rated the best restaurant in town. So, one more menu for you:

~ house appetizer: three tiny glasses presenting creamed tomato with whipped goat cheese, apple gazpacho, and vichyssoise

~ a plate of creamy croquettes about the size of large marbles, nested in applesauce (apples are a specialty in Asturias)

~ risotto with mushrooms, foie, and truffle oil

~ grilled fresh sea bass (yes, again: it is so good!)

~ the house apple tart with sweet cream and cinnamon on top, and homemade cinnamon ice cream on the side

~ a bottle of alboriño wine from Navarra

~ dark Spanish coffee

This was our high-end meal of the trip so far, even though it is not yet Jerome’s birthday. I have half an hour to rest before the Tito Bustillo tour, so will sign off here and continue tomorrow.

Tito Bustillo

It is a charming story: in 1968 a group of students out caving with local guides from Ribadesella find an intriguing chimney in the limestone uplift next to the river. Down below they find a sizable cavern, and they turn left because the footing is easier than turning right. One of the boys steps into a crevasse to relieve himself, and when he looks up, the light on his helmet illuminates markings in red paint on the wall. The group begins to explore, and they find marks and symbols in several chambers of the extensive space. It is getting late, so they leave the same way they came, and a smaller group of them returns a few weeks later to continue their exploration. This time they turn to the right, and find more chambers, one with an entire gallery of horses on the walls. They name the complex in honor of one of their original group, Celestino “Tito” Bustillo, who has recently died in a climbing accident. The site is quickly adopted by geologists from the University of Oviedo nearby, and the rest is history (excuse the pun).

The series of openings that constitute the cave follows a subterranean river, the San Miguel, that opens into the Sella. Narrow passages connect the larger rooms. Nearly every room has art in it, and the passages are marked with red spots on the walls to guide the Paleolithic visitor. The majority of the paintings are of animals -- horses, reindeer, bison -- some of which are huge (six feet from head to tail) and startling in their realism.  There are other less readable symbols, as well as anthropomorphic figures. They are estimated to be around 22,000 years old, with some dating back 40,000 years, plus.

There is too much to tell about the significance of this “rock art” site -- it is on a par with Lascaux and Altamira -- for one message, and the information is available elsewhere, as are photos. (We were not allowed to take any, anyway.) I had expected a cave (ho, hum) and some paintings (yeah, yeah), and was not all that excited about the prospect of the tour. I’ve seen The Cave of Forgotten Dreams. But the experience of Tito Bustillo turned out to be fascinating, not because of the cave -- stalactites and stalagmites just don’t thrill me much -- nor the ancient marks on the walls (some may even be neanderthal, it is now thought), perhaps because of my familiarity with our southwest Anasazi offerings.

What made the experience captivating for me was the story woven by the guide of our small group (only 15 people are allowed in at once), who used her flashlight to good purpose, to recreate for us how it might have been for the original artists. To enter the dark, damp space, the only sound the murmur of the river underneath the floor, the only light the flicker of the tiny fire in the hollowed-out stone in your hand. To not be able to see a whole cavern, but only what your little circle of light illuminates. To take your piece of charcoal, or the red ochre powder from ground-up rock, and from your memory create the representation of a horse, or of a male and female deer facing each other. To follow your predecessors -- because the paintings predate and cover up each other -- and reinterpret their work, or perhaps just add to the decor of the space. To use the curve of a rock face to delineate a neckline, and fill out the rest of the animal form as the wall allows, but perfectly proportioned. The creative experience came alive in my imagination, and it was an experience I will never forget.

Picos de Europa

We spent most of Monday exploring the coast around Ribadesella. To the east, Llanes is an attractive small port, with some medieval streets still intact, and a beautiful harbor. It is larger than Ribadesella, and a bit more touristy. At the harbor entrance, Basque artist Augustin Ibarrola decided to create a breakwater of big, colorful cubes of painted cement, a whimsical and very cheerful marker of place. To the west of Ribadesella, Llastres is a fishing village that is, in contrast, smaller and less touristy than Ribadesella. It is the television setting for Doc Mateo, Spain’s version of Britain’s Doc Martin. Quaint, and quiet. We ate lunch at a seafood restaurant on the wharf there.

I still think that the highlight of the excursion was Jerome’s encounter with a small herd of the local milk cows. We stopped to photograph the Picos de Europa, and were moo’ed at (?) from across the highway. We wandered over to see the cows, who immediately roused themselves to come say “hola”. Jerome stayed at their fence longer than I, and they clearly decided he was a source of interest, the dozen or so females and eight or ten calves steadily approaching his spot. Their coarse metal bells clanging, and two or three of them softly bellowing, they made quite a ruckus. Jerome took a great video with his little camera, which we will try to figure out how to share, luddites that we are. I was torn between laughter and awe, and hope that the fence would hold up as the whole group ambled Jerome-wise. They are beautiful animals, with creamy brown hides and big soft eyes. What a treat.

Yesterday (Tuesday) we packed up the car, said goodbye to the coast, and headed upriver. This driving trip was for the travel purpose of taking us over the Picos onto the central meseta of Spain, but it also became a quest for the source of the river. The Sella is broad and placid in Ribadesella, and remained so as we drove the first twenty kilometers south. Then, the higher we rose and the further south we drove, the narrower the river and the deeper the canyon, until we were in a narrow defile on the edge of a cliff, and thankful for the engineers who created the very small but sturdy road. The Picos rose all around us in their limestone glory, and the red-and-white snow markers grew more frequent. At the top we saw a sign for “La cuna del Sella” -- the cradle of the Sella river -- on our right, went around a curve to the left over a summit, and entered an entirely different environment.

We also left Asturias, and entered Castilla y León. Immediate brilliant sunshine, the air so clear that it almost hurt the eyes, but softer terrain and gentler slopes. The geology reminded us of the Sierra foothills in California, with golden grasslands and deep green foliage, tumbling down from the Picos onto a gentle plain. And so we came into the small but historically important city of León, about which more tomorrow. My photos are not turning out well, but I will post what I have. Jerome will eventually publish his far more evocative portraits of Asturias, as well as the rest of the trip.

Bilbao

We left Lekeitio for Bilbao yesterday, driving first to Gernika (Guernica) specifically to visit the Museum of Peace (http://www.museodelapaz.org/) there. This small but excellent thematic museum was inspired by the ghastly bombing of the town in 1936. The permanent exhibition examines the concept of peace, reviews what happened in Gernika “in the absence of peace”, and examines organized international efforts toward peace today. It was a very moving experience to be directly engaged with the issue in a dramatic and graphic way. A smaller reproduction of Picasso’s famous painting hangs in the stairwell.

In Bilbao, we returned our little Fiat to the rental agency, and came back to the Silken Indautzu hotel. Since it was already mid-afternoon, we went off to the restaurant where we ate on our first day here, two weeks ago, and were again treated to an excellent meal (I know you are probably tired of hearing me say this, but the fact is that we have wonderful food all through the trip!). We wandered through the city some more, enjoying the lively streets of the commercial center, with many tree-lined avenues and round traffic plazas with flowers and fountains. Two rivers converge here and form a large estuary into the Bay of Biscay; the river winds through the city and there are many bridges, some pedestrian-only, that cross it and link the various districts together. Several of the bridges are design statements, including one by Santiago Calatrava. After supper at an Italian/Japanese restaurant (yes, with a split menu of sushi and pasta!), we came back to the hotel to watch a soccer game on the big screen in the lobby bar.

Speaking of soccer, the local team, Athletic Bilbao, is playing tonight against Real Betis from Sevilla, and the latter team is being housed here at the Silken Indautzu. Players have been coming and going all day, eating several times down in the breakfast buffet room, and this afternoon an increasing number of fans, friends, and family also have gathered. As I write this (we are in the lobby, where Internet access is better),the team has just departed on their green bus for the stadium, to the applause and encouraging cheers of the people here. We think we will have to watch the game!

Today’s main activity was a visit to Bilbao’s Museo de las Bellas Artes, which turned out not only to have a top-notch cubist exhibit on display (several Juan Gris, along with a dozen or so other major cubist pieces) but also to have an excellent permanent collection of contemporary Spanish art, including pieces by Antoni Tapies, Miquel Barcelo, and Antonio Saura. There was also a current exhibit of Joaquin Sorolla’s work, and we saw a Gauguin’s “Laundresses in Arles.” The museum is set in a lovely park, and combines a new building with an old in an interesting way.

We found another good place for lunch, with a delicious winter squash soup, and this afternoon have repacked our suitcases for our early departures tomorrow. We thought of going to the stadium for the game, but our 4:30 a.m. wake-up call has us watching it here in the hotel instead. Tomorrow Jerome will fly westward while I take the train east. My residency at the Centre d’Art i Natura is going to be three weeks of hard work, but I am my own teacher and student both, and am really looking forward to the opportunity for dedicated work in a beautiful place. If any of you want more information about CAN or what I am going to do there, please let me know. Otherwise I will sign off with the hope that you have enjoyed these travelogues. I have a few more photos to send, but the Internet here is so slow that I can’t get the images off the camera. I’ll try to send them along this weekend.

León

We arrived in León in the late afternoon on Tuesday, checked into our hotel, and took a walk to orient ourselves. León is a very pleasant small city, easy to walk, and with a lot to see.We strolled until tapas time, around 9, then settled into a small tavern for wine and stuffed piquillo peppers and fried calamari. Real Madrid were playing a soccer match against Istanbul, and we stayed until we were sure that the Spaniards were winning.

León was created in a.d. 68 by the 7th Roman legion, to secure the transport of gold from Galicia back to Rome, and to protect its newly conquered territory from the native Astures and Cantabrians. In the 6th century the city fell to the Visigoths, who held it more or less until the Moors drove them out. In the 9th century the Moors were expelled by a Christian king, and León became the most important city on the peninsula, a symbol for the Reconquista. The province was an independent kingdom until it merged with Castilla through marriage, and it is now part of Castilla y León (though many local signs have had the Castilla y blacked out).

In other words, we are back in multi-layered Spain, with Roman baths beneath a stunning gothic cathedral, a medieval quarter of pedestrian streets, a modern business district, a thriving university, and some of the best tapas anywhere. Our walks yesterday included both the cathedral and the museum of contemporary art (MUSAC), spanning centuries of art in a few hours. Personally, I got more out of the soaring arches and brilliant stained glass windows of the cathedral than I did from the navel-gazing, high-tech, black-and-white exhibits currently at MUSAC. Plus they were tuning the organ in the cathedral in preparation for this weekend’s organ festival, and the sound was simply amazing as the organist ran through various musical passages.

We continued the multi-layered theme today with a field trip to the monastery of San Miguel de Escalada, out in the meseta about thirty miles from León. This small chapel was founded in the 9th century but soon abandoned, until in the 10th a group of monks arrived from Cordoba and stayed. Their restoration of the ruins brought the mozarabic architectural form to the site. A romanesque church was added for the locals to use while the monks lived in the older basilica. In the 12th century the Augustines took it over, adding gothic touches. Later arrivals added mudejar frescoes in the 14th century. At some point restorers brought Roman columns from a nearby ruin for the basilica nave. There are inscriptions in Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew.

I’m not sure I’ve got all this straight; it was hard to keep track as our enthusiastic guide showed us around. But it was charmingly beautiful and a lovely example of the waves of diverse cultures that have swept across this Iberian peninsula. It is a history that keeps bringing us back to Spain. It was a gorgeous fall day in the countryside, and we enjoyed the warmth and sunshine. Photos to come.

Tafalla

We left León on Friday morning and headed west and a bit north into Navarra to the small city of Tafalla, a bit south of Pamplona. It was a long drive, and we arrived late enough and hungry enough that we inadvertently ended up at the restaurant we had intended to visit for Jerome’s birthday. So we celebrated early, and with a delicious meal. Complimentary appetizers of shrimp and cheese in filo dough and a tiny cup of cold shellfish bisque. Baby calamari in their own juices, a vegetable crepe with a light clam sauce, sea bass with piquillo peppers, and steamed baby clams a la marinara (but light on the tomatoes). Local wine, dessert, coffee.

Yesterday we toured the local wine country -- beautiful -- and duly visited the tourism sites to the west and south: a medieval village, Sos, where Ferdinand himself (as in Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic monarchs who headed the  Reconquista -- and the Inquisition) was born; the 10th-century castle nearby where St. Francis Xavier was born; and the 9th-century Monastery of Leyre whose surviving architecture is primarily Romanesque. It is one of the most important historical monasteries in Spain, and is an important stop on the Camino de Santiago.

Despite their beautiful settings, excellent states of repair, and historical importance, all three sites were just a bit too touristy for our taste (complete with hordes of Spaniards out for a weekend in the country), so we didn’t dawdle in any of them. Instead, on the way back to Tafalla, we turned off on a small road to Ujué (ooh-hoo-EH), which turned out to be a charmingly everyday small medieval village high on a hilltop whose only claim to fame is the view and the 12th-century fortified church, which is in good repair and is gorgeous. The tourists were few, and we stopped at the local roadhouse for what turned out to be just an excellent meal, with salad veggies fresh from the garden and a chicken that was slow-cooked and delicious.

Today we first headed north up a small river into the Pyrenees, which are not very impressive this far west (the highest peak out here is about 4,500 feet) but nonetheless contain some beautiful scenery and quaint villages. We came back south into Pamplona, which has recovered from the annual running of the bulls last July and has settled into its normal life of a lively provincial capital and business center. All of Navarra is Basque country, and in Pamplona we actually heard Basque being spoken around town. Nonetheless, Pamplona was named for that memorable Roman, Pompey, who set up a base there around 74 b.c. The city was sacked by the Visigoths, then the Arabs, and being so close to the French border felt a constant menace from the north. As a result, the fortifications of the old city are impressive, and today serve largely as parkland for the locals. We had a delicious meal in the old quarter, and headed for home in Tafalla.

Today is truly Jerome’s birthday, and we topped it off with tapas and a soccer game broadcast at a tavern here in town. The weather has been warm and clear, with beautiful early fall colors in the mountains, rivers running clear and free, and the air unpolluted except where a few farmers are burning their fields. Navarra gets short shrift in the tourist guides, and indeed does not have a great deal of tourism developed. It contains about 650,000 people all told, in an area about half the size of Massachusetts, with its land part of the meseta in the south and the Pyrenees in the north. It is quiet and lovely, the people are hospitable and unpretentious, and we have greatly enjoyed our stay. Tomorrow we leave to head back north to the coast, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t return here on another trip.

Lekeitio

We drove north from Pamplona on Monday to Irún on the Bay of Biscay, turned west along the coast, and settled into Lekeitio for a couple of days. We are east of Bilbao this time, and the weather has warmed up. The coastal mountains here are green, rugged, and beautiful.

Lekeitio is a Basque fishing port on the west bank of a bay created by the Lea river. Boats anchor in a deep basin protected by a concrete breakwater; the rest of the bay is shallow and lined with beaches. The water is amazingly clear, a beautiful aquamarine blue. A small island occupies the middle of the bay; at low tide you can walk out to it from Karraspio beach, where our hotel is. Our room gives directly onto a small terrace shared by the nine rooms of the hotel. The terrace overlooks the small street, the promenade, and the beach. The latter is a lively place, with people of all ages strolling, sunning, swimming, talking, eating, playing, surfing.

On this side of the river, it feels like a resort. On the other side, however, it feels like a working fishing harbor. The boats come in each morning with their catches, and at least some of them are sold right off the wharf to the local residents and restaurant owners. A small medieval quarter, unmarked and unrecognized, climbs the hill toward the ocean, while a modern town of about 7,500 people stretches around the hills back toward the river.

We are just here to relax for a couple of days before heading back to Bilbao and, on Friday, to our separate destinations.

Bilbao

Greetings from Bilbao, Spain -- or, more to the locals’ taste, from Bilbao, Euskadi (Basque Country).  Euskadi is an autonomous community of northern Spain, centered in Bilbao but stretching as far east as San Sebastian and as far south as Logroño. The larger Basque region also includes Navarra here in Spain and the Pays Basques in southwestern France. It would like to be independent, and is the home of the ETA movement with which you may be familiar.

But enough of geography for now. Jerome and I left home yesterday to catch an afternoon Delta flight from Salt Lake City to Paris, and despite a two-hour delay in departure, managed to make our connecting flight in Charles DeGaulle with seconds to spare, to arrive in Bilbao as scheduled. Sadly, our luggage did not make the French connection, but we are assured that it is on its way on the evening flight.

So, here we are back in Spain. This trip’s itinerary will keep us in north central Spain, first westward from Bilbao along the coast, then south to León, east to Tafalla, then back north to Bilbao for some day trips eastward along the coast. This is a shorter trip than usual for Jerome, who will fly stateside on September 27th. I will head east into the Catalonian Pyrenees, for a three-week artist residency at the Centre d’Art i Natura (http://www.farreracan.cat/) in the tiny town of Farrera, returning home on October 18th.

As is evident, I’ll be sending my traditional travel notes, complete with photos as soon as we get a night’s sleep and I can focus. We had a lovely large Spanish meal late this afternoon, and are planning to stay awake until our luggage arrives in another hour or two. Tomorrow we will head out to explore Bilbao, with the first stop the Guggenheim Museum.