Spain to Portugal

On The Saint Sebastian Boulevard 

Hello!
Again, it has been some time I'm sorry since I have been able to write on the blog as the internet has been pretty scarce, and if we are at a library then Esmae needs to use her computer to work on her schoolwork.  But this morning Esmae felt up to date enough (after an 8 hour journey yesterday to Portugal in the camper) for me to use her computer outside the local info center.

So to update you all with what we've been doing.. This last week we have been traveling in Spain. We arrived on Saturday morning in San Sebastian. It had been raining a fare bit on our way out of France, but when we woke up on the border that morning, the sun had come out. During the day a fabulous storm brewed and we just managed to get back to our camper - racing down the nice little bike path on our bikes back to where we had parked for the day. We stayed there - exploring the old town and the new part too - at a very packed camper site (there is almost one in every town where we can park up usually for free, where we can dump grey water and toilet waste and collect new water) where we biked from in the mornings into town. It feels good once we get used to the layout of a city because then we feel confident to bike anywhere and explore. The girls are loving having bikes - it feels like a delicious bit of independence for us all. Especially Noa - who has only just become confident on her bike.

Fern and Noa walking together in Segovia. They have entertained themselves
with telling each other stories whenever we are out and about.

Driving across the border was pretty non-eventful- it was just crossing the river really, and then the signs changed to Spanish. Maybe we missed the 'Welcome to Spain' sign? But it was funny really in hindsight as we found the Spanish to be pretty unfriendly and maybe it was on purpose they didn't have a sign to welcome us! No - it wasn't that bad, but we did notice in France that people readily said 'Bonjour' with a smile as one walked by, but in Spain, it was hard to make eye contact with people and get a smile out of them.

All the same, Saint Sebastian was beautiful - like a giant, people packed Kaiteri. I was so pleased to see that we had arrived on a weekend that there was a cultural festival, so we got to see some dancing and some bands, though only one of them was a trad Basque band. I bought a little CD from them which has been our soundtrack driving through Spain. It felt good to have a bit of live music! I'd really missed it, and although I totally loved France (especially once we had left and entered into the not-quite-so-beautiful Spain) I didn't hear any live music at all. Not even buskers! I was a bit sad about this. I love French music!

After France, with it's beautiful old towns at every turn, and sometimes not another 'new' building in sight for kms, Spain seemed very dreary (the rain and grey sky didn't help of course!) with it's run down rows and rows of crumbling and graffitied apartments and industrial buildings scattered across the landscape. There are vast spaces filled with paddocks of rocks, and sometimes wheat, and sometimes farm waste. Every now and then there would be a row of rocks which resemble a ruin of some sort, or a bordered up 15th-century villa, it's roof caved in and windows and doors bricked up. Quite sad to see the buildings of Spain's history in such bad disrepair. This seemed to be very a very common sight in the country but in the cities, the buildings fared better, and the 'old' town was usually restored and in use. The castles in the region of Castille where gorgeous! But again, on the outskirts of the towns, most of the castles and villas had been left to the wild.

We went to see the famous Alcazar castle in Segovia. This was the castle that Disney based their ideas of 'fairy-tale' castles from. This city, Segovia, also hosts that famous aqueduct constructed by the Romans in the 2nd century. And our camper spot was outside an old bull-fighting ring!

The Alcazar of Segovia

Can you spot Noa and Fern?

The Aqueduct runs right through the city and was designed to bring fresh water to the castle. It is put together entirely
without mortar!

The bull-fighting ring. We were allowed to park just in front of this.

So yesterday we drove the whole day and have reached a small town called Penacova - about 3/4 of an hour from the coast in Portugal. We love it so far! People have been very friendly and patient with our lack of Portuguese and the buildings and scenery are rustic but have a rough, hard beauty. Its very rocky in places (lots of ancient stone walls and terraces in the fields and big boulders) and so much wild lavender!