Hola Amigos! I am sooo excited to be on Spanish soil again and Bilbao has not disappointed. Even the smell arriving at 11.30pm was wonderful and the taxi driver super fast to our hotel. They upgraded us to a big suite and we had a huge overnight sleep. Mind you Sienna is not sleeping enough and has not caught up at all. The rest of us are great.
Next morning we moved into our 2 bedroom apartment. We could not believe our luck and were so excited to see it. We are in the middle of the old town where cars can’t go and there are a million little cobblestone alleys with shops, bars and restaurants on ground and apartments above. We are on 1st floor in the prettiest street with balcony over alley. The girls have a lovely room with window onto central courtyard and locked themselves in immediately and got out all their toys. B and I had a drink and watched the people go by underneath from our balcony pinching ourselves, as we can’t believe how lucky we are. We have metal outside roller blinds down at night to keep out a lot of the noise because as you can imagine it gets really loud with voices from the street.
All of Bilbao is beautiful, clean and modern (but of course the old town’s not modern!!!). It is radically changed for the better since I was here 20 years ago. There are huge plant pots on the main town streets, fountains, squares to sit, and lovely trees lining the roads, not to mention fab shops. In the old town there are heaps of “young new designers” shops and non expensive shoes and clothes. We can’t believe the cheaper cost of food and drinks. We shopped at the fresh food market at the end of our street (which is the 2nd biggest in Europe apparently). Our shopping of salad, fruit, bread, ham, steak, turkey & sausages cost us $18. And big prawns here are only $17 per kilo. Needless to say we’ve been munching on the balcony with vodka (only $20 per litre). Eggs are only a few cents each and fish from the market is average $6 per kilo – how good is that. Brendan is loving Spain on all fronts as you can imagine. He is already talking about how we could live here for 6 months of year. Today we went on the train 20mins to the nearby fishing village of Santutzi and ate fresh snapper and prawns on the charcoal bbq with salad, bread and wine. Was amazing and done just as I remember the fish on bbq from 20 years ago (remember Tam with a bit of oil and crispy garlic?). Afterwards there was another huge playground for the kids. They sure know how to make kids happy here. So the girls played and we roasted in the sun. It’s about 30 degrees and hot sun today. It’s not 5pm and B is having his siesta and girls playing in their room. I’m too excited to siesta here.
Sienna’s favourite food here is pulpo! (octopus). We ordered it first day and she ate the whole plate nearly – was a bit underdone for us adults. Miki can eat a whole fish in about a minute straight and rips it straight of the bones with her hands – she loves it.
Our only problem at the moment is that Sienna is a bit homesick as she’s very tired and we can’t get her to catch up on sleep properly. She has a Ganma (my mum) obsession and when having a cry says she wants to go home to “Stralia”. We’re hoping tonight will be the night that she catches up and returns to perfect.
Am rambling on in the local lingo and getting better everyday, but it’s all in the pronounciation. Even though you may know the word, a lot of the time they stare blankly until you try different ways to say it – buggers! They make you work!
As much as Brendan is fully in love with Spain, he reckons the women are no where near up to par with the rest of the world. Poor thing – nothing to perv on. And we won’t mention the men will we girls! Am keeping my perving sly.
Thankfully everything is much cheaper here than where we’ve been so we are cruising nicely and should be able to make up a bit on our budget.
We are wondering how our next stop will be as we have 2 weeks in San Sebastian and are hoping we didn’t do the wrong thing by not staying here longer. Oh well, that’s not much of a problem to have hey!
PS. Chrissy and Axel will be pleased to read that the holiday has finally been consummated – ooh la la – ha ha ha !!
Day 2
Girls slept 12 hours straight - Yipppeee. we have our little joyous Sienna back. Had a brilliant day, except for the part when we went into the church's open door (huge really old main church in middle of old town) and girls immediately clomped to the front of the church to where the nun was speaking to the congregation and sat down in the front row in front of her talking!. I had to creep/run down and try and whisper them back to me with daggers looks from the "very loving" catholics who were trying to listen!
Then we decided to get some excersise in and started up some steps. Well it turned into hundreds of steps to the top of town in the clouds and opening up in front of us a huge Circus and sideshow/ride bonanza! We went on one of the medium scary rides which left us screaming and white faced but was fun. It was wierd to be up overlooking the city on a plateau of chaos and lights etc having just come up from the skinny alleyed old town built in the 1600's. Starving by this time of 10.30 when we came down we were too lazy to work out menus with the crowds and noise so just pointed to some stuff on the menu and got potatoes and a huge bacon and egg baguette sandwhich which did the job before exhausted into bed.
Day 3
Very relaxed and slow and too late in the morning to find churros with chocolate much to the girls dismay as they had earned it after their long sleep. Will have to get up earlier tomorrow and find some or I'm dead meat for broken promises. Did a big power walk into the new town alone today which was lovely - the shops are showing great clothes and shoes but i'm just walking on by. Organised a car for the next two days and I'm super excited to visit my old haunts on the way to Santander tomorrow. It'll be very interesting and nostalgic. Not much else to tell, just hanging around and loving it.
Adyos for now Amigos
