Notes from Spain

8 May 2012

BRIBES ALL ROUND

Up at 0600. Although we are packed it still takes two hours to get ourselves ready for the road. Jones prepares the room for the arrival in a few days of Jill and Barry. We bribe the dogs with meaty bones. Then we slip away.

Our destination is the Spanish city of Caceres. I pause to phone Honda in the hope that the new GPS disks I’ve ordered may have arrived. But the Parts Department does not answer. My current disks are 5 years old and they show their age on new Portuguese roads when we appear to be driving through the fields.

It's five hours to Caceres. The Spanish roads are impressive - immaculate double highways without a crack. Most drivers stick to the 120kph limit, which feels slow. Numerous signs give warning of police radar controls “for your security”. I set the cruise control and concentrate on staying awake.

Vast plains stretch away to the horizon. There’s little traffic. Jones tries to snap a road warning in incomprehensible Basque but it switches to Spanish as she clicks. We arrive in Caceres mid-afternoon. Problem! our route is barred by road-works. I phone the hotel. The receptionist doesn’t understand my English. We find a parking garage and then trek back to the hotel over the hill. This proves to be the long route as the the parking garage is just around the corner from the hotel. Return to fetch our bags, then on foot into the old city.

First stop is for a beer (Jones prefers white wine) at one of the numerous bars on the great central square, the Plaza Mayor. Few people are about. The shops are closed; in Spain they generally open from 9 to 2 and again from 5 till 9. Tourist info on the far side of the square directs us to the best museums and churches.

At the main museum, few attendants are in evidence. A Murillo on the walls is ours for the taking. All information is in Spanish only, much of which we can make out, although we understand nothing of the rapid-fire conversations around us. Beneath the museum is a great ancient cistern whose water lies clear and cold.

THE AUSSIES

At 1700 crowds appear as if by magic. Apart from one Australian couple whom we encounter, we hear no English. There are lots of tourists but they're Spanish. Our hotel – a smart one – offers 15 TV channels, all in Spanish. If it’s to be the European city of culture in 2016 Caceres will have to pull up its international socks.

We sup at a table on the square. Children run noisily around while parents chat. Swallows/swifts swoop above us. Storks occupy all the high points. Life seems normal. There's no sign that Spain is in crisis.

9 May 2012

Leaving Caceres is even harder than arriving. Lots of u-turns and doubling backs. Finally we discover the route out. Salamanca is three hours away on an immaculate double road. The GPS often shows us travelling in the middle of nowhere.

But it leads us faithfully through suburbs of Salamanca to our hotel in the old quarter. Beside the hotel are two cathedrals, one dating back to the 12th century and one to the 15th.

Inside these huge buildings, it’s cold. Near the altar tiny men are clambering up spider-webs of scaffolding to reach a statue on the wall. It’s hard to imagine how ancient scaffolding reached three times as high to the roof.

We wander down the main avenue of the old quarter, past shops, bars, restaurants with pavement tables and chattering crowds to the plaza mayor, the main square. This is filled with kiosks for a book fair, to Jones great disappointment, as it ruins the aspect of the great open square. We take a table for refreshments and to consult our maps.

Galleries and museums are closed till 5. So we go for a long walk around the old city. A fine Roman bridge looks as good as the day it was built.

At 5 the doors to Casa Lis (the Museum of new art and art deco) open. It’s brilliant, especially in its displays of Lalique and Emile Galle glass.

CASA LIS, LIT UP

90 minutes speeds away, although I do spend some of them snoozing in a chair in front of a video display. At the hotel Jones enjoys her second bath in two days. I do battle with the hotel wifi.

10 May 2012

We squeeze out of the underground parking. The hotel receptionist had sketched the route out of the city on a map but we soon get hopelessly lost. The GPS is equally confused. At last we find our way out of the city. I stop at a Honda garage in the hope of acquiring new disks for the GPS but there isn’t a soul in the showroom and the two mechanics around the back ignore me.

So we head north. It’s 5 hours to Bilbao, allowing for a couple of stops. We encounter the first toll road of our trip, nearly 20 euros. Ouch. Old Bilbao is a nightmare for visiting drivers. There’s nowhere to stop or park. Round and round we go, over one bridge and back over another. Several phone calls to the woman in charge of our apartment prove futile. Then we find an underground car park and walk.

Our lodgings are up a crowded pedestrian walkway in the oldest part of town. Temps up in low 30s and we’re both wet with perspiration. Oihana meets us at the top of the stairs and checks us in to a small, modern apartment, one of half a dozen. The furniture is minimalist, there is no crockery, cutlery, air conditioning or fan – and no English on TV. But Jones has brought most of what we need, the place is comfy and central and the double bed is superb.

In the pedestrian walkway, some kind of publicity mock-wedding is being filmed. The crowds ignore it. I answer the front door bell, which is ringing incessantly. It’s a desperate English visitor, who has returned to fetch his suitcases but can't get in and is deeply grateful for my assistance. Later I see that I have a mention on TripAdvisor for my kindness. Jones sits at our first floor balcony watching the passing show. Nobody looks up. The flow of people is constant; so is the hubbub.

All around us are draped the colours of Bilbao’s football team, the Athletic Club, which has just been defeated by Madrid Athletic in the final of the Europa Cup. The fans are downcast, although you wouldn’t know it from the noise.

We take refreshments on a nearby square and then nip into several of the small shops – there are dozens of them all around us – for supper groceries. Between the Chinese shop, the organic shop and the yoghurt shop, we obtain all we need. After supper in our apartment we go walking along the river. It’s a big river but there are no boats to be seen on it. Why not, we wonder.

11 May 2012

We wallk up the river to the Guggenheim. It’s cloudy and much cooler with a threat of rain. There is one single tourist boat to be seen, tied up at its quay on river. An open air café beside the Guggenheim serves us coffee. A ginger-head who looks like I used to is talking to a pretty girl. Next door an obese woman stuffs her mouth with cake before lighting up a fag.

The museum is huge and quite staggering, a vast, silver, multi-hulled ship of a building. It takes us 20 mins to find the entrance, which entails climbing a long stepped ramp up one side. We are impressed by a giant flower-terrier outside the museum. It's by Jeff Koons, Jones explains. I nod intelligently.

I am ambushed by several schoolboys who have obviously been set the task of interviewing an English visitor.

Why have I come and what do I think of the museum? What is my favourite sport and what is my name. I answer all their questions as truthfully and helpfully as I can. My chief inquisitor’s English is not bad although he has to repeat several of his questions. A second group of schoolboys tries the same escapade but the main questioner retreats in fits of embarrassed laughter.

We spend the rest of the day inside the museum. It’s a strange experience. The building itself, all curves and angles, is stupendous. For this alone Bilbao is worth a visit. But we are underwhelmed by many of the works of installation art. We have a sense that the artists have tried too hard to be original, to be different, to break away, to use new materials.

They take themselves so seriously, orthodox in trying to say something new, to break the mould. The recorded explanations of their works lose themselves in shrubberies of flowery metaphor. We come away with a sense of hype. Most of them are too pretentious for us. Or maybe we are too ignorant.

It’s a long walk back to the apartment through the city centre. The buildings are most attractive, mainly low rise and many in an art nouveau style. There are lots of beggars on the street, and musicians playing for their supper. Everywhere there are people walking dogs, and lots of young families with babies. In the alleys black hawkers stand guard over fake fashion handbags in which the public show no interest.

After supper we walk back up river to see the Guggenheim lit up. When we
arrive the museum is still in shadow on the far side of the river but suddenly flames spurt up in front of it from pipes in ground, one of the more colourful works of installation art.

12 May

STRANGE APARTMENTS

We set out for the market a mile away. The building is attractive but there's little to see inside, other than lots of people buying groceries. Stop for coffee at one of the numerous cafes in the old quarter. As we leave, a bulldog on a lead takes a lunge at me. I manage to hop out of the way. The lady owner restrains her animal far too late.

We carry on to the Basque Museum. One part of the Basque country is known as Biscaya (or Bizkaya. It occurs to us that this is where the Bay of Biscay got its name. The most famous exhibit in the museum is a stone pig with a circular disc between its legs. Although there are numerous stone pigs to be found, dating back to a period before the Romans arrived, this is the only one of its kind. The museum is particularly proud of it.

In the afternoon we walk back to town to visit the Museum of Fine Arts. This houses a pleasing collection of paintings and other objects dating back nearly a thousand years. We are most impressed with the contents of its galleries. I tell the receptionist how much we like the collection. The Guggenheim has a stunning exterior but we think the Fine Arts Museum has more to offer. She's delighted to hear it. Back to the apartment, via a grocery shop, to sup and pack. We have already established with the Tourist Info office across the road how best to get out of the city.