My weekend was quite adventurous! Friday we had an excursion, visiting different cities within the region of Gipuzcoa. The Basque region is split into 7 different districts. There are 3 in France and 4 in Spain. San Sebastian is the capital city of Gipuzcoa so the towns we visited were very small.
We visited a traditional Basque farmhouse (un Caserío Igartugeiti) that is now a museum. I’ve studied them in classes but it was really cool to see one in person. Half of the first floor is for the kitchen and some living quarters. The other half is to store the Cider (I’ll explain later) and the animals. During the winter months, the animals are brought into the house every day. It protects the animals and provides internal heating for the house and as you could imagine it provides a wonderful aroma. This farmhouse didn’t but many houses have the living quarters on the second floor, because heat rises. The top floor is where they store food for the winter months, store farming equipment, dry animal skins, and have a HUGE cider press. The Basque region is known for their cider. They ferment apple juice much in the same way wine is made. I’ve tried it once, it’s very bitter tasting but I liked it.
From there, we went to the town of Aránzazu to see a Cathedral and eat a DELICIOUS lunch. If there is one thing you will learn about the Basque culture, they have a “myth” for every form of religious, historical, or evolutionary event known to man. In a lot of stories, the conclusion seems to be that the Basque people did everything first and society followed along. It’s kind of funny. The Cathedral in Aránzazu is one example. According to a Basque legend, the Virgin Mary appeared to a young shepherd and the sanctuary was built to commemorate the event. The original Cathedral burnt down and a new one was built in the 1950’s as “modern architecture”. Look at the pictures, it’s really creepy looking. We ate a traditional Basque lunch at a little hotel. We had paella, chicken, french fries and flan and vanilla ice cream for dessert. Paella is a rice dish but there are many types; it can be bland, spicy, curry flavored, with chicken, fish, steak... pretty much anything and most include peas, mushrooms, peppers. I don’t know how to describe the flavor we had, it was kind of cheesy with muscles in it. Sounds scary, but it was delicious!
After, we went to the coastal town of Zumaia which has gorgeous, geologically significant cliffs and rock formations. History lesson here we come…. There are vertical strata formations along the coasts that signify the creation of the Pyrenees Mountains from the tectonic plate Spain is on colliding with the tectonic plate of France (and northern Europe). There are also layers of iridium which are attributed to the impact of a huge meteorite that fell on Earth 65 million years ago, thought to have led to the disappearance of the dinosaurs (of course they would have proof in the Basque Country!). Let me tell you, listening to an archaeologist explain the formation of the earth, compositions of particular rocks, and geological formation in Spanish was pretty difficult. 3 of us put our pieces of comprehension together and figured out everything she said haha. Unfortunately it was a really fogging day. We took a boat out into sea to view the cliffs from the ocean but the fog was so thick we couldn’t see anything! Apparently we were lost at sea for about 10 minutes because no one could see land but our tour guides started playing Mambo #5 and danced as we reached the harbor. It was hilarious! I recorded a video on my camera, I don’t know if you’ll be able to see it.
Well, that was all on Friday. Saturday afternoon was about 73 degrees in S.S so Kaitlin and I got sandwiches at our favorite place, sat on the wall by the beach, people watched and went for a run. That night we went over to Kelly and Camille’s and had dinner. Kelly’s parents own a restaurant in Tahoe and she’s a great cook! Today (Sunday), 6 of us went for a hike to a town nearby. By bus it takes about 5 minutes but we took the adventurous trail through the mountains. There are paved, dirt, and rock paths along the ocean, on top of the mountains. It was beautiful. At one point we somehow managed to… umm… get a little lost. We ended up only a few feet away from some wild horses in a barbed wire fenced area. It was kind of funny, in “this is a really steep hill and there are horses that we need to get around” kind of way. It was 6 miles, pretty much uphill the entire way. We ended up in San Pedro. It has a large port and cute little restaurants. Although S.S. is the capital of Gipuzcoa, they don’t want the large industrial ships in their harbor (it’ll hurt the aesthetic appeal) so everything is brought in and out of San Pedro.
It was a very active weekend which felt great! We are planning to explore the wine country in the southern regions of the Basque Country next weekend. I added a lot of pictures to my google account from the weekend. You can put all of these names to faces if you want too.
Agur!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment