I try to get people to understand that Wife and I don't take vacations. We travel. A vacation is an escape from your day-to-day life. Most people when they take a vacation don't want to worry about things. They just want to go somewhere and have a good time.
People who travel are going to have an experience. Depending on the type of travel they do, that experience could be more or less extreme. Wife and I are definitely NOT into the extreme travel experience. However, we do like to challenge ourselves. And we definitely expect things to NOT always go our way. In fact, how we deal with those situations is kind of how we measure how far we've come as travelers and as a couple.
Today was definitely one of those challenge days.
We were heading to a town that is just outside of Bilbao by the name of Getxo. It has an old fishing town, a very unusual bridge, a long beach, cliffs for viewing from. Driving to Getxo was not a problem. In fact, getting from our apartment to anywhere hasn't been a problem. Getting back. Well we'll talk about that later.
Our first challenge was the old fishing town. It turns out that this is a very steep, hilly place. Normally that's not an issue. We might complain about how we hurt, but we would do it. But we have Wife who is recovering from her foot injury and was just in wheel chairs at the airport a week ago. I am definitely in over protection mode and Wife is rapping me verbally on the knuckles telling me to NOT anything she's done since before Sweden.
The next challenge is eating. Finding what we want that fits our eating habits has been way harder here in Bilbao than it has been during our stays in the El Campello/Alicante area. We just kind of assumed that the eating pattern would be the same. In Campello/Alicante (and the area around it, just about every restaurant as something during the lunch hour called the menu del dia. It is usually two courses and a dessert or appetizer. There are choices for each course, It is usually an incredible value of quality and quantity. Since we like to eat just two meals a day, it is perfect for us. We assumed it would be the same here.
Nope.
Instead, this is an area that takes the small plates concept (pintxos, tapas, racciones) to the ultimate. Literally every place you find is either a bar or taberna and only serve these small types of plates. Or they are more expensive restaurants serving an a la carte menu. The challenge for us with the first is Wife really doesn't like the vast majority of things from the small bites menus (either because of the ingredients or because they are served at room temperature), or second, we don't want to be spending a ton of money for what is a 'regular' lunch.
Unfortunately, we are only just figuring this out after having been in Bilbao for four days. But today, with the fatigue of climbing, and not being able to find what we wanted to eat, I was getting very frustrated. I definitely did not want to force Wife to eat things she doesn't like, and I was going to be damned if I was going to pay $80 for lunch. So we ended up not eating any lunch!
Our final challenge was getting back to the apartment. For the second time now, we got totally misdirected on our way back. Our Google Maps is acting wonky. it is not giving the kind of detailed, ongoing directions we normally get. We are frequently coming to forks on the highway and it is telling us nothing. We seem to universally chose the wrong fork. Does it not understand Basque? And there is this odd aspect of driving here that I will call the 'semi-roundabout'. This is an intersection where you stay in the center to go straight but for all your other turns, you must be in the right lane. If you are turning left, you go around a half circle and wait for a light that takes you now through your left turn. Missing these was a major reason for our getting lost.
However, I will give Wife and I credit, we stayed pretty calm (that is a relative term) through it all and got back to the apartment. We even backed into our parking place with a (relative) minimum of stress.
We still needed to eat. I walked to the supermarket and got the makings of a chicken mushroom pasta which I must say really hit the spot and actually tasted quite Spanish.
Photos
With all the challenges and with not great light, it was not the best day for picture taking.
Getxo Coast
I saw these guys wandering around the tidal pools. I have no idea what they were doing.
AGGGHHH! CALL OUT THE DRONES! THE ANCIENT ENEMY IS AMONG US!
The Old Fishing Port actually had a lot of things that could have been good photographic moments if I wasn't freaking out about Wife re-hurting her foot.
Looking back at Getxo
SIGNS OF THE WORLD
Lots of places will tow your car if you are parked wrong.
Here, They Are Going To Ditch It In A Bin!
Hardcore
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