Biarritz with Rita and Luc

One day Rita, Luc and I drove to Biarritz, just across the border in France. It was early in the year and too cold to lay on the beach, so we just admired the pretty town. 

Some of their trees are cut back like the trees in Spain, leaving just knobs on them. This might look better in summer!

Beautiful architecture is everywhere. 

San Sebastian with Rita

Rita and I went to see the beautiful old city of San Sebastian. The sky was overcast that day but it was a weekend, and we hate to waste those at home. 

Up on the hill, across the bay from the city, is an old fortification - some low walls and old cannon left behind from some of Spain's many conflicts.

The view of the Bay of Biscay was just wonderful.

But it started to get a little windy.

 And then it got very windy!

So we headed down the hill and across the bridge to see the city be fore the weather got too bad. San Sebastian has a huge, amazing church, the Good Shephard Cathedral, or as they call it, Cathedral del Buen Pastor. It sits snugly in the middle of town. 

There is a poignant statue of Saint Sebastian on the front of the Basilica of Saint Mary.

Actually, there seemed to be a cathedral everywhere we looked, and we enjoyed them all.

At this point, "overcast" turned to rain.  A light rain, just enough to need the umbrella that Rita had the forethought to bring along. 

Santillana del Mar trip with Rita

Rita and I drove out to Santillana del Mar one day (I don't really know which day). On all of our trips before Randy joined us, we took Rita's little red car. It wasn't fancy but we loved it; it got us everywhere we wanted to go.

It's a fair drive out there, and along the way we passed a few small towns, but mostly rural scenes that looked to me to be as old as Spain itself. I didn't see any tractors here.

Santillana del Mar is an old, small town, unchanged for several hundred years. It's a protected historic site, so residents cannot build or change structures in the town, but there is a sub-division outside with newer houses. Rita told me that Santillana del Mar is called the "Town of Three Lies" because it's not associated with a saint (santo), it's not flat (llama) and it's not by the sea (mar). 

We stayed in the Paradore de Santillana Gil Blas. Paradors are a series of government-organized hotels, designed and located specifically to promote tourism. They are usually in a historic building; this one was charming.

The town had a lovely old cathedral, not fancy outside but very impressive, and inside the alter has massive amounts of gold and silver leaf on the decorations. The interior walls and tall columns are the same bare stone as the outside, and I love it that way. Rita and I went in once for Mass. 

On the central plaza which every Spanish town has, sits the Palacio de Velarde. It isn't really a palace, it's a grand home built in the 16th century by the wealthy Velarde family.  

I appreciated the small, humble scenes of life. Nothing has changed here for centuries, and the lack of people gives it an odd air, as if everyone had just left a few minutes ago. 

Nearby are the famous Altamira Caves. I really, really wanted to see these but we couldn’t get in. Viewing is by reservation only, and they were booked at least one year ahead. The parking lot, which over looks the caves, was a close as I got. 

But at least the lobby ceiling was painted with a very faithful copy of the caves, and there was a film about the discovery of the caves and their paintings.

Apartment in Plenzia

Our apartment was in Plenzia, a short distance from the foundry in Asua. Bilbao was the biggest town nearby. Nearby were little towns like Berango, Portugalete, Las Arenas and Sopelana. A lot of this area was sparsely populated; outside the towns was real farmland  One of my favorite sights at night was looking up the hills, where one small town blazed alight in the dark, looking like a city floating in the air. 

And "our beach" at Sopalana - we really enjoyed this!

Santander

Rita and I drove to Santander one weekend. It's about 70 miles east, along the coast. Most of the big cities in northern Spain trim their trees severely. It was very common to see trees with no leaves at all, nothing but lumpy branches. So when we took stopped along the road by some tall trees, I was so impressed I had to take a picture!

Santander is a pretty port city with a nice wide beach, although when we were there it was too cold for many people to take advantage of it. 

 

We were comfortable walking through the city, but we stayed bundled up in jeans and jackets. 

And the city had plenty of those cropped trees. They were so misshapen that I thought they mimicked some of the more ornate lamp posts.

One of the prettiest buildings in town is the Grand Casino.

And the Banco Santander headquarters are impressive. Sometimes buildings are more impressive without knowing what they actually are. 

When Rita and I go out, we don't usually have a bunch of activities planned. We like go somewhere, look around, get something light to eat, and people-watch. Sunday is an excellent day to people-watch because it is customary to "promenade" on Sunday afternoon. People put on their best clothes and go for a leisurely stroll around the busiest sections of town. This particular weekend was Carnival weekend so instead of their Sunday-best, many people were dressed in costumes. And the cutest one of all was this little girl, in an old-fashioned peasant dress.

A new hard drive

The building that housed the business side of the Asua refinery ran out of an old, somewhat shabby building. The main offices were on the first floor, while the secretaries and IT department were located on the second floor. After I had been there awhile, my boss called from the US to discuss the situation. We both agreed we really needed to install a new hard drive. The problem was that the only access to the second story was an old, narrow, uneven staircase. It was so tight that it practically a spiral. The hard drive was about the size of a stove; there was simply no way to bring it up the stairs. There wasn't even room to hook a wrench in the ceiling and haul it up. 

I called Mario back about this and he said "find a way". I kept going over options, and finally I went upstairs and took a hard look at the front wall. There was nothing on that wall, inside or out, and the face of the building was flat. I had a quick conversation with Mario, then found Eduardo and told him what I needed: someone to make a big hole in the wall, a crane to lift the hard drive up through it, and someone to build a door to cover the hole. The staff walked around with grins on their faces while the work was going on, marveling at the things those crazy Americans came up with, but it worked! We soon had a new, efficient hard drive to work with. In fact, it worked so well that we brought in a second drive.