Lost in Space... I mean Spain

First off... let me just say thank God for the inventor of GPS.

OK, when last we left you, we had just explored and throroughly enjoyed the lovely town of Beynac. We then headed off to Bilbao Spain. Bilbao is known mostly for housing the Guggenheim Museum. As an art history major, Sara was quite excited to see that, and she would not be disappointed.

So into the rain we headed for what we estimated would be a five or so hour drive. Things were pretty uneventful until we got to Spain. We were sad not to get a Spanish passport stamp as the border crossing was unmanned. Penny reliably led us to our first stop... San Sebastian. San Sebastian is a resort town along the coast just as you cross into Spain with beautiful beaches and an upscale feel to the town. I hear it is quite popular with the celebrities, but there were no TomKat sightings by us.

It was raining quite hard when we rolled in to town, and parking was impossible. As it was already about 19:00 (that's 7:00 for all of you Stateside), and we had no accomodations lined up, we decided to just press on. We determined that taking the local roads to Bilbao would give us the maximum chance of finding a hotel. Things started auspiciously enough. Driving down the coastline was beautiful despite the rain. The first non-sketch town we hit was Zarautz.

I should pause here for a moment to explain that the towns along the border of France and Spain are in what is known as the Basque region. They are a bit separatist, and choose to speak neither french nor spanish, but have their own language, euskadi. Sara is the primary voice of the Shiu's abroad (except China where surprisingly I was able to communicate quite well). However neither Chambersburg Area Senior High School nor Penn State offer Euskadi as a language course. Jonathan was also no help in this department.

Back to Zarautz.... we saw a sign to a hostel and decided to give it a try. It was above a bar in the town square that was hopping. We spoke to the bar tender/reservations manager who told us that it would be impossible to get a room in any of the hotels in town. I guess it was booked for the end of the summer holidays. Now I was getting nervous. In Europe, you don't have your plethora of hotel chains on the interstates that are available for check-in 24 hrs a day. More characteristic is that you have to check in by a specified time (somewhere between 6:00 and 10:00) else you're out of luck.

We finally made it to Bilbao (about 22:00) after finding a number of other places either full or no longer open for check in. It was then that we passed the Guggenheim. Sara was so uber-excited and said that that made her day so she was happy. I was less satisfied and would much rather be winding down in a nice comfy hotel room. That's when we saw a sign for the Sheraton... we're savedm Woo Woo. Then we saw that it was a five star hotel.... Boo Hoo. It seems that Bilbao was having the festival of the century this particular weekend... complete with carnival rides, live music concert, and fireworks. The streets were packed and the hotels were all full.

After grabbing a light dinner (which we weren't quite sure of what we had ordered until it arrived at our table), we got back on the road, deciding to take our chances outside of town. (Side note.... there seemed to be polka/oompah loompah karaoke going on upstairs at the restaurant. Hilarious. Even I had to smile a bit at that). Timecheck - 0:15 (12:15 am). We exited the city on the expressway. Sara again prayed for a place to stay, even if it was just a nice safe parking lot where we could put in for the night.

Immediately thereafter we saw a sign for a rest stop. That looked pretty perfect to us. We pulled in, quite exhausted from the day. We thanked God for his swift answer to our prayers, Sara climbed in the back seat, and I put down the drivers seat. We pulled on our eye bras (a.k.a. sleeping masks) and put down for the night. I for one, had a great nights sleep.

Next stop, Garcia-ville.... I mean Oviedo.