I came home last night to a bunch of comments from my nephew and it inspired me to finish this up. I should have turned comments on sooner, but I just get so much xanax, handbag, penis-enlargement and mail-order bride spam that I just turned them off and posted links to FB for my comment fix. Then I turned them on here for Ben, who promised to make me laugh with his wonderful wit and sarcasm…ahem, ummm, I’m still waiting…I got nothing and right now I just deleted at least 15 comments about mail-order handbags for brides on xanax with enlarged penises.
So there’s that, and it’s just really going to bother me if I don’t fill in the gap between my last week in Spain and my impatient posting about Greece. So even though I’m back home, I’m going to barrel through Spain and France with bullet points and captioned image galleries. Anyone who has stuck around and is still reading this, thank you so much, hope it’s as fun for you to read as it is for me to write.
Just a pre-babble before I start bullet-point babbling…when I got home last night, after a super aggravating JFK assfest…I mean, who’s running that joint?…I was greeted by a squirrel-free apartment that was soooo sooooo clean. Cleaner than when I left. I mean, my rubber ducks are clean, and they seemed to have…procreated?? How is that possible, you ask? The cleaner apartment, not the procreation of plastic ducks. Well, my friend Ellen stayed here a few days with her dear friends, Santiago and Natalia (still so sad I wasn’t here to help entertain them!). Santiago lived in NYC until he was 9, HUGE Yankee fan, moved back to his native Ecuador and I don’t think he’s been back since. Ellen is a HUGE Red Sox fan (yeah, I’m still trying to work that one out too) and wanted to make his homecoming extra special. Turns out he used to live in Inwood, which is super close to me and she even…ack…bought Yankee tickets! And…double ack…went to Yankee Stadium! I think more than once, bless her. His wife, Natalia, is from Argentina and they brought me the loveliest textile and, apparently, Natalia also cleaned my apartment and left it in better shape than I left it. Muchissimas gracias, mis amigos nuevos, me encantan los regalitos me han dejado (el mantel y el vino y el apartamento limpio y las patas relimpias tambien!) No era necesario pero tan apreciada. Y tu mensaje en Skype! Espero que nos encontraremos en el futuro!
Okay, so back to Spain.
After my little morning tour of adorable coastal towns, I wanted to get busy during my last few days in Spain and get a good hike in and maybe visit another village or two. Teresa told me about a hike that I could jump up on around her neighborhood that would take me through some beautiful hilly Basque towns and get a glimpse of the camino and some neolithic sites. She gave me a map and explained how to get to Orio, Just go arriba arriba, and pointed to some hills from a bunch of windows in our apartments and said something like no puedes perder…you can’t get lost. Ha!
- I got lost.
- In the first 1/2 hour.
- So I asked for directions at this beautiful agriturismo up the hill behind my neighborhood, Igara, and they seemed like simple enough directions, even in Spanish, only one izquierda and the rest derecho, and the added reassurance from a sweet old man that I just couldn’t get lost…no puedes perder, hija.
- I got lost again.
- Who gets lost going straight?
- So I asked for directions again, this time from a feisty old lady cleaning out her van while dancing to a Whitesnake song. I’m not kidding. “Follow this road, straight, it’s only 5km to Orio”.
- So 12km later I was lost again, on a not-so-straight road that led to what looked like an exit ramp to an 8 lane highway. What the what? Where the hell was I? I met some other hikers and bikers along the way who kept telling me I was going the right wrong way so I just marched on.
- I managed to dodge the highway and finally saw what looked like a town in the distance, yes, it was Orio. The road was stunning, and I had lots of fun talking to strangers along the way, the town was cute but a little underwhelming. I was starving and thirsty and newly obsessed with txakoli so I went into the first place I could find, gobbled up a few pintxos, guzzled a few glasses of wine and dragged my man feet to the bus stop to wait for a bus back to San Sebastian.
Last day in Spain and blabla car manana!
