San Sebastian: the beach

After Bilbao, I took the bus to San Sebastian, a beach resort in Basque Country. I walked from the bus station into town, passing the cathedral and a lot of ritzy shopping streets. Because San Sebastian is close to the French border, it has had a lot of tourism for a long time. It's got beaches, but they're mostly concrete beaches - they have sand and tons of hotels lining the promenade. The first thing I did was walk that promenade to the other end of the cove. I took a funicular up to the top of a hill to see the view of the city from above. Luckily it didn't rain while I was walking over there and on top of the hill. From up there, I could see the entire city, which isn't that large, and the green mountains off in the distance.

Back at the hostel, I made some rice for dinner and ate an asparagus omelet with it. I chatted with the other guests before showering and getting some sleep.

Friday morning I woke up to sunshine. I gathered my stuff and ate breakfast. By the time I was ready to leave, it was raining again. I walked around the old part of the city trying to find a museum, which was closed (the building was under construction). I walked by the water and would have kept walking except the rain was coming down harder than I had expected. So, I headed to the underground market. This market was quite interesting because it was under a glass structure and at the entrance to a supermarket. I wandered around taking pictures of seafood (more goose barnacles!) and stopping at a health-food store to stock up on soy milk.

When I went back upstairs, the sun had come out. I crossed the river and walked to a beach where I dipped my hand into the Bay of Biscay. The water wasn't too cold, but I was not about to go for a swim (it was windy and damp).

For lunch I went to a bar and had some pintxos. These are the Basque version of tapas. They're smaller and come on a piece of toasted bread (which I did not eat). I chose a place recommended by the New York Times. I had crab salad (basically crab, mayo and paprika) and a large sardine with blue-berry jam. The blueberry one was surprisingly good. I had not thought combining fish with fruit jam could taste good together, but they do. Then, I went to the market again and got some veggies and fruit for a snack.

Walking from the hostel to the bus station, I passed at least three or four health-food stores, which is a lot for such a small city. I guess it's the tourist and surfer/hippy influence, but I certainly appreciated their presence.

Guggenheim and Basque Country

I woke up Thursday morning in Bilbao. I got a map at the bus station and set off toward the old part of the city. Somehow I wound up walking through the immigrant neighborhood, which was refreshing. In Andalucía there are some immigrants, but they try to blend in or keep to themselves because they aren't really accepted (especially not in Priego). In this neighborhood in Bilbao, restaurants with Jamaican flags painted on their facades were next to African hair stylists who were next to Chinese grocers. It was great to see such diversity in a small, Spanish city. It made me realize how much I miss New York and Boston (okay Somerville/Cambridge) for this reason. It was also refreshing to see a "gritty" neighborhood. Spanish seem so obsessed with old, charming architecture, which I do like, but after a while, it gets somewhat boring. Bilbao has plenty of that, but it also has modern buildings and working-class areas. Even middle-class areas of Granada look like they're trying to be something more. This wasn't fake.

In the old section of the city, I saw the San Antón church and bridge. I also went to a market, which wasn't anything special, and walked around the seven original streets of Bilbao. Then, it started to rain. In the drizzle, I climbed some steps to see the old part from above. I couldn't get a great feel for what it would have been like to live there when this was the only part of the city because now it's full of designer boutiques. Leaving the old part of the city, I crossed the river and came face-to-face with a protest....my first in Spain!! People had gathered to promote May 21st as a day off from work (they want their employers to pay them more because of the economic crisis). It was a peaceful protest, a few people, a bullhorn, lots of flyers.

I walked past an art nouveu train station and crossed the river again to see the ayuntamiento (town hall) which is housed in an old palace. In the dampness, I crossed the river again, this time using Santiago Calatrava's Zubizuri pedestrian bridge. He constructed a glass and steel bridge which looks like it's twisting as you cross. I sought out this bridge because I like another one he did: the Women's Bridge in Buenos Aires's Puerto Madero neighborhood....yes, I am that big of a nerd. (I also saw his Puente de Lusitania in Mérida in April.)

Finally, back on the main side of the city, I went to the Guggenheim. This was my main impetus for coming to Bilbao in the first place. It was definitely worth it. Frank Gerry is amazing. The building is huge and was built on an awkward piece of land: it actually has a (car) bridge going through/above it. Also, it's along the river which is somewhat lower than the rest of the city. When I entered the museum I was in a three-story high gallery which had glass windows in front and behind me. This space was used as a gallery: eight, white sedans were suspended from the ceiling with flashing red tube lights through them. Off to the side, Jenny Holzer had another light installation. This one was a series of panels (the little red dot lights used in advertising) with words about life and love. She had the words in English and Spanish on one side of the exhibit and in Basque on the other. You could see these lights from upstairs and they reflect off the metal walls of this gallery. The other large exhibit on the first floor was Richard Serra's The Matter of Time. Serra is a genius...mathematically at least. I had seen his work at the DIA: Beacon in NY. He takes ovals and stretches them, then puts them into spirals and other forms. He then turns them into large-scale (10-foot-high) metal sculptures which you can walk through. You loose sense of space and direction inside them. It's bizarre. If he's got an exhibit near you, go.

I ate a salad for lunch at the museum's cafe. Upstairs, I encountered two more exhibits. The first was Murakami's "From Private to Public," a retrospective of the Japanese artist's freaky/colorful/cartoonish art. It combined sculpture, paintings, wallpaper, carpets, video, and Louis Vuitton bags. He has certain characters that he has created. He repeats these images throughout various media. The final exhibit I saw was by Chinese Cai Guo-Qiang. It was called "I Want to Believe." Cai designed the fireworks at the 2008 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony. Videos of his fireworks displays were on view in one part of the exhibit. For the Olympics, he created a series of footsteps across the sky. He also had sculptures and paintings on display. One of the sculptures was called "The Age of Not Believing in God." It was a series of wooden religious statues, suspended from the ceiling with arrows in them.

At the end of a video exhibition, I encountered a room with books on installation art. I didn't stop to read them because I had already read most of them in doing my research for my communications project last year. It was strange to see them in the museum. It made me think of last semester at Tufts and hunting these books down at the BPL.

Jeff Koons had two pieces at the museum. In the back, he had a bright series of tulips. This was similar to the works he did on the Met's roof last year. In the front, he had a puppy made of flowers. It was like a large, colorful topiary terrier; a nice contrast to the metalic facade of the museum.

Bilbao has a bad reputation for being an ugly city with not much to see. I think this might be true of the old Bilbao, but everywhere I went, I found streets and buildings under construction. The museum has given life to the city. Tourists are there and the people are working to make their city nice. It's doing well: they've got some parks, the river looked decently clean, there's a bike path, there's a metro system...I could live there.

Santiago de Compostela

On Wednesday, I took a 1 am bus from Córdoba to Madrid, arriving at the airport a little after 6:15. From there, I took a shuttle to my terminal, checked-in and took a plane to Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia in Northwestern Spain. From the air, I could see the region was much greener than Andalucía.

Many catholics come to Santiago on a pilgrimage because it's known as the place where St. James was buried. I figured any church/city worth walking to must be worth seeing. (Also, a lot of people told me to go to Santiago.) I arrived in Galicia and was immediately met with new sounds....they speak Spanish, but most people also speak Galego.

I got to town at around noon, stored my stuff at a cyber cafe and went to check out the cathedral. Inside the cathedral, I found a mass already in progress. The signs said not to take pictures during the masses, but I did anyway because there is a mass every hour during this time of year. (The two times I went into the building there were masses going on.) The masses are to welcome pilgrims to the church and city. The cathedral was interesting because it had a part where you could go up (a few steps) above the altar, cross it and come down on the other side. I had never seen this before. From above the rear part of the altar, I was actually behind the priest and could look out at the people at mass.

Outside the cathedral, I walked around the medieval city, looking at the architecture. The cathedral has three plazas around it. The biggest is the Praza do Obradoire, where the ayuntamiento (town hall) and Parador (state-owned hotel) are located. The parador used to be a hospital and hotel for early pilgrims. In the Praza de Quintana, I saw the "holy door" which is only opened certain years.

After the cathedral, I went to a market where I bought some fruit. They didn't really have much food for lunch, so I went with a Lonely-Planet-recommended restaurant (not something I usually do). El Gato Negro (the black cat) is a small tavern where locals go for seafood. I sent a text message to Luis's (Lourdes's boyfriend) sister who told me about the place. I ate crab, which was a pain to get out of its shell, and something called percebes. I didn't actually know what these were where I ordered them. In English they are called "goose barnacles," they have a shell and a flexible, mesh tube attached to that shell. You split the tube from the shell and eat the rubbery cylinder inside. At the end of the cylinder is what looks like a mini-shrimp in size and shape, but not color.

After lunch I stopped into the Colexio de Fonseca, a school, where I saw its unimpressive patio and an exhibit on writer Valle Inclán. Last week was the Galician "Week of the Book," so this was the first of three writer-related art exhibits I saw that day.

I went to Alameda Park where I could climb up a hill to see the cathedral and sky-line from above. Then, as the rain started, I went to some free museums. First, was the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (Contemporary Museum of Galician Art). Here I saw an exhibit by Maurizeio A. Quarello, an Italian artist, who took known works of art and changed the subjects to animals. The works were part of a book he illustrated called "Caderno de animalista." I liked them even thought they were somewhat childish.

Next I walked up a hill to another park called Bonaval and saw the cathedral from the other side. Back below the park, I went inside the San Domingo de Bonaval Monastery to the Museo de Pobo Galego (Museum of Galicia). It focused on the folklore and cultural history of Galicia. In addition there was a photo exhibit of local celebrations, an exhibit about the printing press, and an exhibit about water. The water one was meant to teach people about water usage and how to better conserve water. The building itself was well-worth the visit. It had a triple-spiral staircase. I am a sucker for spiral staircases and to see three spiral staircases in the same space was dizzying.

After having very little sleep, I decided I needed a mid-afternoon pick-me-up. Instead of caffeine, I chose sugar: gummy candies. I went to a store called Pecados de Santiago, "sins of Santiago." I thought this was an appropriate name considering the town is a religious-travel destination. Sugared-up, I headed to the Museo de las Peregrinaciones y Santiago (Pilgrimage Museum). I liked this museum least of all. The wall-tags were in Galego. They had booklets in English, but there was so much text, my brain couldn't handle it all. One thing I did learn is that people found a seashell near to St. James's body which is why pilgrims bring back seashells from Santiago.

For dinner, I followed another recommendation from Luis's sister and went to Os Concheiros, a pulparía, or "octopus house." The octopus, cooked in olive oil and paprika, was delicious, but my dinner was lacking something...so, I went to a veggie store and bought a tomato, cucumber and some celery. I needed my veggies.

Getting onto the bus, I chatted with a woman who had done the "camino" (pilgrim trail). She thought I was Argentine and was surprised I only went to Santiago for the day. I would have liked more time in Galicia, but one day was perfect for Santiago. I felt a little like a fraud though: everywhere I looked were people who had walked or biked to Santiago. I took the easy way out...

The bus ride was quite interesting....we switched drivers at around 3 am. The new driver then informed us that this was his second time doing this route and asked if someone could help him get from the highway to the bus station in two cities along the way. I took some Tylenol PM and let the Spanish deal with it. From the bus, I caught a glimpse of the cathedral in Burgos (which I saw on Saturday).

Cordoba Patios

For the past 10 days the city of Cordoba (capital of the province in which I live...same name) has been holding a contest to see who can best decorate their patio. Many traditional houses here in Andalucía are built around a central patio which allows people to spend time outside and be in the shade (the walls of the house protect the patio from sunlight). Each year, people open their patios for visitors and contest judges.

Tuesday, Lourdes, Guillermo, Cecilia, Erin and I went to Cordoba to see some patios. We started in the touristy section of the city where some hotels and government buildings had also decorated their patios. These were nice, but nothing like the patios in the residential part of the city. People go all-out: flowers cover the walls, floor and every other surface. Some patios have wells. Some are large, with many houses connected to one space, while others are more intimate. The winning patio is actually a mini-city; it's more like a series of walkways connecting many houses and shops. It was interesting (in a voyeuristic manner) to see other people's houses, and the patios were really pretty, but it was all a bit over-done for my taste.

Field Trips

My students have been going on more field trips than I ever thought possible. This past week various groups have gone to see a theater show, a music show, some have gone to a "teaching farm" and pre-school went to the bakery. Next week, 6th grade is going somewhere, but I'm not sure where.....

I got to tag along on the music show trip. It was called "Songs of the Earth" and taught the kids about traditional music from around the world - including Irish, Peruvian, Mexican, Balkan, African, North African, Greek, American, Argentine and Asian music. The kids really enjoyed it and I had a good time, considering that I had been to more than half the places they were learning about. I was quite surprised that the Virgen de la Cabeza kids were really well behaved. Cecilia was with her school and those kids never stopped talking. The people who put on the concert also gave each kid a booklet with information about the different places.

Ronda

This weekend I went to see a Tufts friend, Christina, in Ronda, another small town in Andalucía. She's a conversation assistant, just like me, except her school is located outside of Ronda and she has to commute four days a week. Christina lives with some Spanish people and an American girl, who was away for the weekend. Friday and Sunday we hung out and didn't do anything touristy.

Saturday we walked around Ronda to see the sights. Ronda is famous for its bullring, which is one of the oldest in Spain (the first fight was in 1785). The father of modern bullfighting, Pedro Romero, is from Ronda. We visited the bullring, which was really interesting. I'm not going to make it to a bullfight, and I'm okay with that. Part of me has these Hemingway-esque ideas of bullfights, but more of me thinks that I would not be able to handle it, emotionally.

It was interesting because they had a museum on the history of bullfighting, which included costumes and posters advertising fights. Also, there was an exhibit of firearms (aka rifles older than the USA!!!!). These aren't used in bullfights. I think the collection came from the same people who operate the ring. Because the ring was not in use (the only fights are in September), we were able to walk around the area where they keep the bulls. It was somewhat disturbing. They have a system of pulleys to open the doors containing the bulls in their cages. A person can stand on the second level and look down to make sure the bull is in position to enter the ring. We also walked around the actual fighting space, which is large in proportion to the space for spectators.

The other tourist draw in Ronda are the bridges. Three bridges stand above the El Tajo gorge: they are called the "Old Bridge," the "New Bridge" (still older than the USA), and the "Arab Bridge." The New Bridge is by far the most impressive. It's extremely high above the gorge (which is basically dry).

The New Bridge joins the oldest part of Ronda with the newer parts of the city. The former is similar to various parts of Cordoba and Priego. Because of tourism, the new part of town has stores like United Colors of Benetton and McDonalds.

I liked Ronda. It's better connected to other parts of Spain and slightly larger than Priego. It's also quite a bit flatter.

Power walk

It's warm here, so I decided to go for a walk this afternoon. I left the house at around 5:30 pm, just as siesta hours were ending and people were starting to walk around again. That turned out to be a huge mistake because I saw at least ten of my students and seven teachers. I was wearing shorts, a sports bra and a tank top. Everyone looked at me like I was nuts for wearing shorts. It was about 75-80 degrees and the Spanish were still wearing jackets (some had scarves). I'm not walking at this time anymore because I really don't want to run into that many of my students again.