A good day of travelling. Well rested after last night, we had a good long night's sleep and were on the road by 8:30am.
After consulting the guidebooks, Jan pronounced that there were not a lot of absolutely-must see places along the way on the North Coast of Spain - just amazing views along the whole Costa Verde (Green Coast). Some stops yes, but not ones that were crucial to our interests, whatever they may be. Except one, some 15,000 year old cave paintings. But they were off limits to the likes of us, you had to be a full professors to visit them, and we would have been looking at photos in the museum. Churches, tick, cathedrals, tick, beaches, tick (the best were Biarritz and Laredo so far) and one more winding cobblestoned street, tick. We opted to drive instead, take our first long driving day of this journey. So we did that, and here we are in Santiago De Compostela, Spain, out on the West Coast.
A good day, a tank of gas, and a longish stop in Gijon just before the half-way point. We had a hot lunch and went shopping in a big shopping center here, just like in Bilbao. Bought ham and cheese and buns and granola bars and fruit, perfect for us in the car. In and out of the parking garage with no problem, and the lack of language is no biggie to us at all anymore. Point and make hand-motions in the air, that is all there is to it. Though its freaky to know that in a big shopping mall full of people, there is nobody to talk to. At all. We even tried a couple of early twenty-somethings today. Nothing, a blank stare after one word of English. We are strangers in a strange land, two aliens, all alone. We ordered lunch by selecting two sandwiches from a menu, one with a fried egg (mine) and Jan's with pollo, which is chicken. We were very pleasantly surprised that it all went so well and the food was so good.
Then on the road again, aided by Hal who is settling down and being a star. Actually, it is us that is learning his nasty little tricks, and compensating for them. Now we all get along well.
Notes from the road.
Dr. Henry Higgins, of My Fair Lady fame, was wrong. The Rain In Spain (DOES NOT) Stays Mainly on the Plain. It rains like hell on the coast too, as well as on the plain. Our day alternated between downpour, clouds, and blue sky between the clouds with sun shine. Then back to rain cloud and sun, etc.
There were only of couple of heavy highway trucks out today, absolutely nothing compared to the previous days. And hardly any cars either, we often had the road to ourselves as far as the eye could see. Nice. We set the cruise control at 120 K/hr, the speed limit, and settled back to watch the scenery roll by.
Northern Spain is very craggy, deeply inset inlets with sea waves crashing on the rocks. The highway system is just excellent, I can't say enough good about it. It is a roadway of bridges and tunnels on the coast, with enough flat inbetween to make it interesting. Tunnels of a kilometer or more in length, and long very high bridges spanning the chasms below. And all around the steep hillsides with berms of earth and hedges separating the farms and all of the steep ground dotted with grazing sheep. More than anything it reminded us, in the sunlight, of Ireland and its '40 shades of green'.
Gas in Spain has averaged about 1.11Euro/liter, compared to around 1.44Euro/liter in France.
Spanish drivers, and the Spaniards that we have met in general, are very happy and very polite. We did not have that experience in France, particularly in the malls or the cities.
On the GPS front, good news, I fixed it. The front seat cigarette lighter is broken alright, but the one by the back hatch works fine, as Mark said. Problem is, the power cord from the GPS to the lighter is not long enough to reach to the front window, and Hal would go nuts if we suctioned the thing to the back window instead. He would think we were going everywhere backward and I doubt that his mind could cope with that. So, yesteday I went to a store in Laredo and bought 3 meters of two-wire cable and a roll of black electrical tape. Last night, while Jan was picking pictures, I used the corkscrew knife, that is normally used to cut the metal or plastic covers on the wine bottles, and peeled back the wire insulation on the new piece, then cut and peeled the wire that goes from the lighter to the GPS, joined them up, taped them, and IT WORKED!!! It should have worked, it isn't rocket science, but I am still surprised after all these years when something actually works the way I think it should. It is a rare thing. Anyway, the GPS ran fine all day long after its internal battery would have given out. Yay!!
Tonight a lovely, fancy, five-star hotel in Santiago. Jan is going to have a bubblebath now, and we are off to bed.
