Spain - Basque Country

Pamplona:

Question - what do you do when you drive into Pamplona at nine o'clock at night, mistakenly park the car twenty blocks away from the old part of the city that you want to stay at and cannot find a hotel because they are either full, expensive or dirty?

Bill - Walk back to the car and drive to another town, hating life.

Jeeheon - Get the expensive hotel room and immediately start eating tapas and drinking wine to forget the fact that the car and all your stuff are half way across the town and you will be sleeping in the same clothes you wore all day.

We wisely went with my answer. What great tapas bars they have in the Basque Country! Rows and rows of tapas are displayed on top of the counter; and you toss the napkins and cigarette butts on the floor when you are done:

My goal was to have one tapas and one drink at ten different places, but after eating shrimps, anchovies, the longest clam I have ever seen (size of an asparagus) and octopus, with a churros & chocolate break in the middle, I got queasy and had to go back to the hotel room to lay down.

The Basques have their own language. All signs are in both Spanish and Basque - how cute! In the main city square, we saw people spontaneously dancing to traditional Basque music - how cute!

Cafe Iruna, where Hemingway used to frequent:

San Sebastian - a pretty resort town set around a U-shaped beach:

Our Side Trip to France - On our drive from Catalonia to the Basque region, we took a side trip into France, where we went to see the famous grotto in Lourdes. The grotto is a Catholic pilgrimage sight, hosting over six million people per year. It is said that in the 1800's, a fourteen year old girl had visions of the Virgin Mary at the grotto and miraculous healings of the sick at the sight have been reported thereafter:

We had crepes for lunch since we were in France. I am not sure why but every time Bill tried to speak French (i.e. "merci beaucoup!"), I would dissolve into a fit of giggles.