Travels with The Rayman

The Guggenheim Museo in Bilbou, Spain has nothing but curves.  A very curvaceous structure that is hard to comprehend in it’s magnificence.  The camera does not capture it.  It as so worth the visit.  What a day.

Curves actually figured prominently in our excursion today.  Each couple ventured out from our villa to “do their own thing.”  Our thing was the Guggenheim.  Then we figured  we would continue on to San Sebastian.  Well.  Nothing ever goes according to plan which begs the question of why we bother to plan?  But we do.

Well, Glenda the GPS was not part of the planning.  She had other ideas.  So, she directed us to exit 117.  Only exit 117 was closed.  As in non-existent any more.  So, when we passed 117 she started “recalculating”.   So annoying that we turned her off.  Then we figured out that the museo was on the river and the river was downhill from the freeway so we got of the freeway and plowed downhill curving all the way.  When it appeared we were lost, we decided to “pooh it”.  This concept comes the book The Tao of Pooh.  Great book.  Read it if you haven’t.  It’s about applying the concept of Tao to Winnie the Pooh.  Winnie and her friends couldn’t find the lake, so they decided to stop looking for it.  As soon as they did that, they found the lake.  And so it was for us.  We found the Guggenheim.

Really, people, if you haven’t been to the Guggenheim in Spain, plan a trip.  You will be blown away.  What genius on display.  Inside and out.  Up and down.  Backwards and forwards.  Everything is curved.  Nothing is straight.  Things echo.  Things emit light.  Things change all the time.  There’s even an echo chamber…and it’s not the kind we have at home with our Faux News friends.  Curved steel walls that looked like wood.  Inside, if you made noises, which of course, I did, they would echo.  Rayman even joined in!!

 

But I digress.

After visiting the Guggenheim, we walked along the river to the old part of Bilbou.  Had a delightful time there.  Didn’t get robbed.  Noticed a few really interesting things.  They have a train service that runs along the river.  Light rail.  And they planted clover or some kind of green plant all long and between the tracks.  Rayman thought it was a defunct operation.  No siree.  Very smart of them because it softened the look and made it cooler, temperature wise.  We also saw a couple dancing in the street, so to speak.  Very fun and spontaneous.  I’ll try to download the video.

We met a woman and her husband from the States.  Not sure where they were from.  How we met was, we saw a purse sitting on a bench in the Guggenheim.  Rayman went off to find Museo personnel to collect the purse while I guarded it.  The owner of said purse, arrived with hand on heart.  And that’s how we met.  We told her our sad tale of being robbed.  He suggested a gun might have come in handy.  That’s when I knew we would not becoming fast friends.  Anyway.  Good samaritans here.  They were very appreciative.

 

We then proceeded to leave Bilbou by again poohing it.  And we found our way out.  We then headed toward San Sebastian and decided to drive toward the coast away from the freeway we were on.  Fabulous coastline.  Reminded us of Highway 1 but with overbuilding.  The CA Coastal Commission has really done us all a big favor.

But, again, I digress.

Short version is, we arrived back at the villa and Janis and Terry beat us back and she had paella on the way.  Table was set.  She is way cool.  Allan and Dorothy texted to say that we should eat without them.  So we did!!  Muy bueno.  But there was enough so that when the Bucks returned, we welcomed with dinner and drinks and a good time was had by all.  Another fabulous day with curves, roundabouts and stories of how all of us got lost.  Multiple times.  Ah, misery loves company!!

p.s.  Terry came up with a great idea.  Program GPS devices so that when things don’t go right, they say, “Oh, oh.”  We embellished the idea.  “Why didn’t you listen to me?”  “You are a dumbshit.”  “Go back, stupid.”  “Ha, ha.  Fooled you.”  You get the idea.  Too funny.

 

Well, today is our last Thursday in Spain.  And for the occasion, Rayman and I planned to cook dinner for the group thereby reducing windshield time and walking time dramatically.

Menu de Day

Roast organic chicken stuffed with lemon
Bread Salad
Roasted potatoes and garlic cloves cooked in olive oil and butter
Fresh boiled asparagus
Ice cream
Vino

And what was really interesting is that we planned to do all the cooking on the wood stove in the kitchen.  So, Rayman gathered the pre-cut wood, the matches and some paper.  A fire was started.  Successfully.  You can smell it in the house.  I brought the chicken to toom temperature for even cooking.  There were two chickens as there are 6 of us and the chickens were small to our way of thinking.  The bread salad involved plumping the raisins (the recipe called for currants but we were lucky to find raisins).  Toasting the pine nuts.  Slicing a spring onion.  Washing the frisee.  Sauting the onion and garlic.

The potatoes were cut up and slathered in olive oil and a few teaspoons of butter just to guild the lily.  Oh, and unpeeled cloves of garlic were tossed in.

The owner of the house told us the fire would take about an hour’s lead time.  So we did that, lighting it about 3:30.  And then we popped the potatoes and chickens into the oven at 4:30.  I kept saying, “Rayman, I don’t smell the chicken.”  He would go to the stove and check the fire.  Yep, the fire was burning.  The top of stove was hot, hot, hot.  Well, then.  They must be cooking.  This conversation was repeated about three times.  “Rayman, I don’t smell the chicken cooking.”  Rayman replied, “Maybe we can’t smell it because it is well sealed.”  “Rayman, I still can’t smell the chicken.”  The reply was, “Well, it must be cooking.  That fire is raging.”

We didn’t want to open the door, because the temp dropped 50 degrees (at least )when we put the stuff in to the oven.  Well.  Finally, we decided we had better check.  The chicken and potatoes had been in about an hour.  They weren’t stone cold.  But they sure as heck weren’t cooked.  So, Terry, the engineer by training, came in and he and Rayman discussed possibilities.  I found the owner’s phone number and called him.  The conversation was not going well, what with his spanish and my english.  I implored Janis to speak with him.  She did.  Then we got somewhere.  The fire had been started in the right place (there were two possibilities).  So, Rayman decided to crank the heat up.  He fed the furnace 3 pine cones, and 3 more logs. Voila.  The chicken started to make sounds, crackling sounds.  We were on our way.

We let the food cook about an hour more.  When I took it out, meat was falling on the drumstick bone.  (who ever came up with the vernacular, drumstick?)

But I digress.

I baked the bread part of the bread salad while the chickens rested.  The asparagus was cooked on top of the wood stove.  We kept things warm by having them just on or near the top of the stove.  And it all came together.  A minor miracle since none of us had any experience in wood stove cooking.

No matter which way it went, this was going to be the blog material.  We had a 50-50 chance.  Oh, and we sat down to the table at 7:30 or so.  Gives new meaning to the idea of slow food.

The other thing that happened was we as a group had not been our for a meal together all week.  It was on the radar that we would do so tomorrow.  So instead of playing Parchese, scrabble, bridge or some other game, the Packers and the Bucks researched restaurants in the area on their electronic devices.  I was all wrapped up in mine too because I was trying to figure out how the post a darm video on my blog.  Without success.  So, there was much conversation about many things.  And we all concluded that it is very difficult to eat in Spain unless you eat tapas early or eat dinner late.  Not much in between.  Websites were consulted, TripAdvisor was asked.  At one point, Dorothy found that someone from Santa Maria, CA had visited and critiqued one of the restaurants right down the street.  “Can you imagine?”, she said.  Then she read the glowing comments.  Terry said, “Well, just remember, they are from Santa Maria.”  I think the way it was resolved is that calls will be made in the morning to ascertain if 1.  the restaurant is open on Fridays.  2.  Do they serve lunch at lunch time?  3.  Is lunch more than tapas?  4.  What hours do they serve lunch?  5.  What is on the menu?  This with language differences.

What could possibly go wrong?

In the event that things do go wrong, there is plenty of leftover chicken, some leftover bread salad, some leftover asparagus, two chicken carcasses, and a myriad of other things we will have to throw away since we are leaving on Saturday.  Just saying.

 

p.s.  The pictures at the top.  Janis at the sink.  The food before dinner.  Rayman and I in front of the mountains about 5 minutes apart.  The weather and clouds change here in a nano second.  Don’t like the weather.  Wait 5 minutes.  And that was the point of our pictures!!

Yesterday we took a hike.  We cooked dinner.  We did laundry.  Three of us, Janis, Terry and Allan, drove away and hiked part of the Camino de Santiago.  They left early and came back around 4.  Quite the hike.  Rayman, Dorothy and I were happy that we didn’t do that.  We were happy to stay behind.

I took a nap.  Finally got some rest.  Rayman washed the Mini.  It had accumulated a lot of bird doings.  What’s with all the bird doings in our lives lately?  Oh, well it could be worse.  Glad pigs don’t fly.

After dinner we talked about our interesting families.  And we sat outside until almost 10:00 p.m.  Sun was still sharing it’s light with us.

And that was that.

Here’s the most interesting thing I saw yesterday.  Just cut and paste this link below into your web browser.  Let me know if this works.

Pigs in Spain

Today, we dinged around in Durango, a small town near where we are located.  For history buffs, see this link.  wikipedia.org/wiki/bombing_of_durango.   Terry went on line and looked up this info because he was astute enough to notice bullet holes on some of the buildings.   There was one church built in the 1500s and it featured Jesus in a glass box.  It was a bit strange but impressive at the same time.  OH, the organ was very big.  Oh, and it was set on fire when full of church members in 1937.  So much history here.

We thought we were going to eat out tonight.  When we returned to the abode, it was discovered that the restaurants were closed today.  OMG.  So, we just ate stuff.  And Allan was the man of the day.  He brought out the food and sliced the cheese, plated the salami.  He bought gum drops, chocolate covered pastries, cherries, sliced oranges, bread, olives, Good N Plentys.  He opened the wine except for the Rayman who got red wine all over shirt when he tried to open a bottle with a fancy dancy wine bottle opener that malfunctioned.

While we were sitting out, it started raining.  Allan got the umbrella out and opened it.  We sat there under the umbrella and enjoyed the sound of rain on the umbrella.  We would have missed all that had we eaten in a restaurant.  Oh, and Allan even dressed the table with an empty wine bottle filled with flowers.

The other interesting thing we did was visit the two lady cows in the pasture right next to our villa.  They were so cool.   Do all cows have horns?  Terry asked that question.  No one was sure.  It was googled.  Yes they do.  Oh, and CA cows are not happy cows.  They reside in fields of dust.  Often times without shade.  The Spanish cows have it made.  They graze in green pastures, munching chamomile, plenty of shade and only a few in each field.  If you want to see happy cows, come to Spain.

Tomorrow we visit Bilbou and see the Guggenheim.  Can’t wait.

p.s. Rayman read about the Basque area because Ali let him borrow a book about the region.  So throughout all this time, he has been educating me and some of the others on the history of the area.  Lucky to have him.  But then today, Terry and Allan added much info to the conversation.  The Basque were and are very tough.  And somewhat tribal.  And the ones we have met have been very kind.

I’m getting behind.  Too much to do and see.  But yesterday took the cake.  The night before, in Potes, Rayman ingested a relaxation pill because he wanted a good night’s sleep.  Well, little did he know, when he bought pills to replace those stolen, he got a higher dosage.  He therefore was like the walking dead all day yesterday.  I will refer to it as Rayman being comatose.

After showering and checking out, we went to a small bakery for coffee and rolls.  We each picked out a sweet roll.  He chose apple  thinking it was pineapple and I picked something dark and mysterious which turned out to be chocolate!!  We each shared a bite.  Then Rayman when back for another and got the chocolate.  And then he went back and got another chocolate.  And then he went back and got another chocolate pastry.  At this point I knew something was terribly wrong.  He was really mellow and not behaving normally.  I decided to do the driving.

The scenery continued to be absolutely fabulous and so I kept stopping and getting out to take pictures.

I made him get out too just to get him to move.  He was stumbling and bumbling.  I kept telling him to pick up his feet.  I was worried he would fall. We were headed to a natural history museum that was a replica for the Caves of Altamira.  These are famous caves found in northern Spain that were inhabited by homo sapiens between 15,000 to 30,000 years ago.  And the Spanish people completely replicated them because all the tourism was starting to destroy the caves.  An elegant solution.  And the exhibit was beautifully done.  The caves had all kinds of paintings of bison, big cats, goats etc.  And the exhibit had movies, slide shows, artifacts.  And the Rayman had a very hard time with the visit.  But he made it through.  Without falling asleep on his feet.

After the visit we continued north until we reached the Bay of Biscay.  Then we headed east along the ocean stopping at a small beach Ali had recommended.

 

And then I drove us to a small seaside village and we stopped for lunch.  Here are some pictures. Insert pictures and explain We made the mistake of ordering wine without telling them that we wanted a glass each of wine so we received a full bottle.  To wash the calamari and ham down with.  Bad english grammar, but you get the idea.  Just what the Rayman needed.  Wine on top of drugs.  And then the owner of the place liked us so much, he treated us to an after lunch liquor.  Below is a picture of “Juan, the jamon slicer”.  He made quite a production of plying his trade.  We feasted on jamon and calamari.  Yummy.

 

 

Oh, my.  Well, no sooner had I started driving us back to the main highway, Rayman was fast asleep.  And so it was just me and Glenda, alone.  And Glenda was driving me crazy.  She kept saying to turn left but if I did, I would have driven us into a ditch or worse.  She kept recalculating.  At one point I woke up Rayman when I yelled at Glenda to shut up.  He promptly “passed out” again when he discovered nothing was “seriously”  wrong.  But yet, everything was wrong.  I was tired.  Without assistance from him it was a real chore to find my way. Before we left the museum, Rayman stated that he wanted to go to Santander to spend the night.  So, here I am with Glenda and a comatose husband trying to find a hotel by myself.  Well, I was at the end of my rope.  So, I pulled into a hotel and beseeched the “laid back spouse” of mine to go in and see if they had a room.  They didn’t.  It was Friday.  So, I kept driving in circles.  This city had a roundabout about every 50 yards.  And Glenda kept barking at me to “enter the roundabout and take the second exit” which I would dutifully do …only for her to “recalculate”.  Really, people.  Glenda was as out of it as the Rayman was.  Only different.  So, I pulled over and activated my phone and searched for a hotel on Orbitz.  It became apparent that the city of Bilbou, down the road about 40 km, was a better choice and so I tried to book a room.  But I had all kinds of trouble.  So, I shut off the phone and decided I would try to find our way back to the freeway and find that Holiday Inn Express that I briefly saw on Orbitz.  Well, that led me to figure out once back on the freeway that their freeway signs had a picture of a cot and that meant there were hotels.  So, I took an off ramp heading away from the beach onto another 4 lane road and when I saw a sign with a cot, I exited the freeway and found myself in a small town by the name of Limp????  I took the first roundabout and drove down the lane long enough to realize there were no hotels in that direction.  Went back to the roundabout and went the other direction.  It too looked hopeless.  And then…miracle of miracles…we ran into a parador.   I was exhausted.  Rayman was half awake.  And Glenda was still on the fritz.  The parador was a sight for sore eyes.  And that’s where we spent the night.

 

After checking in, Rayman took a nap.  At 9:30 I woke him up, we went down for a snack and as soon as we got back to the room he was oujt.   I stayed up until 1 a.m. blogging and trying to do technical things on my blog to no avail.  I gave up in disgust. Today, we arose and Rayman was back.  We headed out to meet our friends after we consulted the computer and sort of figured out where we were to go.  Our house was in the country.  We wrote down the names of towns and numbers of roads and we looked at the picture we had thanks to Dorothy insisting on more information on how to find the place at one of our planning parties a few months ago.  And Terry found and shared a picture of the driveway. Spanish freeways are fabulous.  And the mountains march down to the sea.  And those two realities produced miles of tunnels.  Beautiful tunnels with very few cars.  Each time we came out of a tunnel, there were new scenes to appreciate.   It is hard to overstate how impressive this country is.  They seem light years ahead of us.  Admittedly, they are a country with a population of about 48 million… but still. The freeways are well marked, mostly.  Of course we still managed to get in the wrong lane to pay the toll and had to back up to go into another lane but that was how light the traffic was.  We could do that.  And then we arrived at Durango. Well.  We got hopelessly lost in Durango, the “biggest” town near the house.  At one point, we ended up on a dead end street.  Literally.  It was the cemetery.  Here’s a picture.  And we asked a policia hombre if we could park next to him in the center of town.  After about 5 minutes of talking exhaustively in two different languages, we threw up our hands and got in the car and drove away.  Parking was not in our future.  Instead, I dropped Rayman off at a money machine and while he tried to get money using an ATM with no english, I drove around a roundabout about 20 times.  I started getting dizzy.!!  He finally got money sans receipt because he couldn’t figure out what buttons to push and we somehow managed to find out way of Durango.  “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll wind up somewhere else”, the great Yogi Berra once said.  Truer words were never spoken.  But after much trial and error we miraculously spotted the driveway and it was with great fanfare that we drove up that very long driveway and saw Dorothy and Allan standing in front of the house with the owner.  OMG.  It was such a good feeling.

The owner of the house showed us around and presented us with a bottle of “his” wine.  He is an investor.  And he provided jamon, and bread.  Also, Dorothy and Allan brought goodies like olives, jamon, chocolate, bread, bread sticks, etc.  Finally, Terry and Janis rounded the curve and we were finally all assembled. Sorry folks for the length of this blog but it covers two days. After sharing food and drink, the owner, Miguel, drove us back down to Durango and escorted us to the supermarket where we spent about an hour gathering food, wine, gin, ice cream etc. for two days.  And that was a kick.  First of all, you must pay to use a cart.  Some places refund your money at check out.  An interesting concept.  And then Dorothy and I bonded with an english speaking young man in the fruit and vegetable department.  He kept helping us find things.  In the end, we both hugged him as we left.  He was so sweet and helpful.  Janis had developed the grocery list and had a plan for tonight’s dinner which turned out to be fabulous.  We had so much fun pinching ourselves because the house was and is fabulous.  The view is sublime.  And the company top notch.  Over dinner we told stories of all the funny things that had happened to us since our arrival in Europe.  And some not so funny things.  Like our robbery.  But it was a great reunion.  A good time was had by all. And with that, I must retire.  I am exhausted.

With all due respect, you can keep the cities.  Today, Spain blew our minds.  And it all started with breakfast.  As last reported we were in Valledodid.  When we checked out, I asked the young man behind the desk for a recommendation for churros and hot chocolate.  Without hesitation, he whipped out a map and put a dot on that map and said, “Go here.”  So we did.  However, it was not that easy.  The place was in the center of town, zona commercial.  And everyone in the entire city was in this area.  There was no where to park.  I drove us down one way streets the wrong way.  I kept being in the wrong lane at the wrong time.  We finally spotted a parking garage (it was underground so hard to spot!) and ditched the car.  Then we started walking with our map in hand.  Spain as last reported has terrible signage and that is true whether you are in a car or on foot.  We walked around our elbow to get to our El Castille.  That was the name of the chocolateria. (spelling suspect).

In desperation, we stopped in two different stores seeking help.  The second place had on staff a woman that spoke english.  And with her help we found El Castille.  The place was a joint.  There were about 5 tables and all but one was full.  It was unclear to the casual observer what the protocols were.  Did they wait the tables?  So I just bellied up to the bar and asked a guy behind of counter for dos orders of churros and chocolate.  He was fun and made fun of my spanish.  But, hey.  We got our breakfast.  Pictured above, dear reader.

After the decadence of the moment, we found our way back to the parking garage and headed out of Dodge.  Next stop Leon, on our way to Pico de Europa, a national park.  I found it almost accidentally on the internet this a.m.  And it sounded interesting.  Well, that is the understatement of the year.

But I digress.

So, we drove to Leon with a few detours (called getting lost).  Glenda, our GPS, kept getting confused.  She is a ditz.  So we consulted a map and determined that there was a tourism office next to the cathedral and figured the cathedral would be easy to spot, what with high spires and all.  So we told Glenda to take us there.  Well.  She got completely frazzled and we never did see the cathedral.  Rayman was at the wheel and when he said, “I’m getting sick of going in circles and not getting anywhere.”  I agreed and we told Glenda to take us to Bonar, Spain.  But you must understand.  We never did see the cathedral.  We never saw the tourism office.  We couldn’t find a Starbucks (for free wifi).  We were understandably upset.  But the name Bonar got us to laughing which at this point was a good thing.  We laughed at the name because it reminded us of John Boehner’s name.

Well, getting to Bonar was a kick.  We ended up on a one lane (more or less) road.  We were the only car.  And we started to doubt Glenda but we saw that at least we were going toward the mountains so how bad could it be?  And we were right and so was Glenda (for the first time of the day).   We drove past a row of houses and an old lady was standing out in front.  Rayman surmised it was a village of advanced alzheimer’s patients because we gave her a wave and she just stared back, vacantly.

Spain doesn’t do rest stops as far as we can see.  So we took a detour off a road, did our business and as we were heading back to the main road we were lucky to run into these people and their sheep.  Not literally.  We didn’t hit them.  But we did wave after I snapped this shot.

We stayed the course once back on the main road and finally turned onto a two lane road and the mountains got closer.  But not before we saw may interesting things.  Here are some.  Below is a solar farm.  We saw many like this.

Everything was in bloom!!

We were climbing but ever so slightly.  Like the Sierras on the west side.  You know you’re going up but shocked when you head down Tioga pass.  It was that kind of the thing.  But I’m once again getting ahead of myself.  You can barely see the mountain in the distance.

We stopped at Bonar for lunch and tried to order a veggie sandwich.  We were sure we ordered a veggie sandwich.  When the sandwich arrived, it had veggies and tuna.  We ate it.  Sat in the sun in a nice back patio.  Good to get out of the car and get something to counteract all that chocolate from this morning.  Then we jumped in the Mini and promptly left town on the wrong road.  Turned around, retraced our path and turned left and headed up the right road.  And with every turn, we couldn’t believe our eyes.  The landscape just became more beautiful.  We had programmed Glenda to take us to Riano.  She kept shouting out instructions that just didn’t match the map so we finally put her out of her misery by turning her off and going the only way we could go.  We followed our noses.

Really, people, why didn’t know that they place existed until now?  it was breathtaking.  Here’s some of the pictures we snapped.  They don’t do the majesty of the place justice.  But here is the evidence anyway.

 

Getting closer.  Rivers everywhere.  Water in the rivers!!  Below, notice the purple flowers.

Lots of tunnels.

 

 

 

 

When we reached the summit, we hit a series of switchbacks that went all the way down the side of an enormous mountain because the terrain was that steep.  Think about driving highway 1 at it steepest point.  Then multiply that times 100.  That pretty much was it.  And we were on the outside lane.  OMG.  One false move and our backpack wouldn’t be the only thing lost.  They would never find the bodies and you, my dear reader, would spend the rest of your days wondering what ever happened to us.  Parnelli Jones was at the wheel but it couldn’t get any speed going.  I think we went down the side of that mountain in 2nd gear the whole way.  About 2 miles down from the summit, some bicyclists were riding UP and gestured for us to stop.  They wanted to know how much farther.  No kidding.  I can’t imagine anyone riding up this mountain, these mountains.  It was brutal to drive down.  And another interesting thing.  We passed older people walking up the road.  Their afternoon jaunts, we supposed.  These people walk.  Where to?  I have no idea.

The next place we were headed was, well, there was no place in particular.  All the way through these mountains there are tiny bergs.  Many probably had hotels but I cannot swear to it.  Rayman was driving and he just charged right on through, never stopping to inquire except at one town on a lake and he didn’t like the smell of the place(the hotel)  and there was no one at the reception desk…so we kept trucking.

Finally, I told Rayman that I felt like I was being held hostage in the car.  (By this time it was like 6:30 p.m.).  So the next town, he slowed down and we looked around and decided to stay the night.  Our hotel was right on the main drag but they gave us a room with a view and given the road the people would be driving up, we figured the traffic would die down to nothing.  And besides that, when I opened the windows, what we heard were cow bells.  Yes.  Cows grazing about 100 yards away.  The bells were very cool.  The rest of the evening was uneventful.  Thank goodness.  We ate, drank and were merry.  And discussed these cows.  The man brought the cows down from the left hill and he told them where to go.  And they went.  Right by our car.  So much fun to have experiences like this!!

 

One postscript.  The woman at the front desk bore a striking resemblance to a picture of a woman on the wall that was all dolled up in skiing apparel.  I asked if that was a picture of her.  “Mi madre.” , she replied.   And on the opposite wall was a picture of her papa.  And across the lobby was  a picture of the entire family (I think about 10 kids) all standing in a line on the mountain in the snow.  Very touching, really.  Very cool.

My pulpo.  aka octopus

This morning we explored Segovia.  Beautiful city.  Had a cathedral.  They charged to see it so we didn’t see it.  The outside of it was imposing.  The big draw was the Roman aqueduct that was built around 2000 years all.  And much of it is underground and of course, we didn’t see that part.  The above ground structure was amazing.

We needed drugs as we lost all our drugs in the robbery.  For less than 12 euro, we got drugs without prescriptions that cost us about $200 at home (with Medicare and a supplemental policy).  We are so being screwed by big pharma.  It is depressing.  Thinking of loading up before we return.  But really, folks, why do we take this treatment from the big pharma?  It’s unethical.

We also parked in a parking lot that was very cool.  Spaces without cars had a green light.  Spaces with cars had red lights hanging above.  How practical can you be?

Today we ventured out into the countryside.  Roads are perfect.  Well maintained.  We managed to get from Segovia to Valladolid.  Through farmland, mostly.  Beautiful day.  Saw lots of solar farms.  Mostly crops.  No livestock.

When we arrived in Valladolid, we drove around looking for our hotel.  Silly us.  This city is big.  We then decided when we saw a sign for Office of Tourism we would stop in… only we only saw the signs.  Never saw the office.  Finally, we remembered that we had a garmin GPS with us.  So we turned it on and went right to our hotel.  Let’s see.  It took 1 1/2 hours to get from one city to another and 1 hour plus to find our hotel.  Uhmmmmm.  Oh, well.  At least we found the hotel.  And that is when things got interesting.

The young lady behind the desk assigned us a room and told us where to go (kindly).  We went there.  The room wasn’t there.  But we kept searching.  To no avail.  So, we went back to the desk and they assigned us another room (think they felt bad) and we actually had to go down a half flight of stairs to get the elevator to go up one floor.  Our room has a great view of the Duero River out our window.   It is an odd hotel off the beaten path and we love it.   It is odd but beautiful.  Has a bidet and a phone in the loo.  Quite upscale really.  And reasonably priced as we used air miles to book.

Once settled, we decided to just wing it for dinner.  Jumped in the Mini and drove down to the Plaza Major and parked the car.  Then we walked and walked and walked looking for a restaurant.  Segovia had a restaurant every other building.  This city had no restaurants…at least where we were.  So we gave up (poohed it!!) and ran into a small tapas bar that featured a good looking Spaniard who spoke english.  Nirvana.  Still practiced our spanish on him though.  And this is where I ordered octopus.  Rayman went safe with bread smeared with caramelized onions and balsamic vinegar and melted goat cheese.  Bravo.  And did I mention the bull fight?  This place had TVs all over the place and there was a bull fight being fought.  The bull lost.  It was gut wrenching and I couldn’t watch the kill.  Poor bull.  At one point the bull charged the horse.  Yes, there was a horse in the ring and it was outfitted with a suit of something that protected it from the raging bulls horns.  And the poor horse was blindfolded.  At one point the bull charged the horse.  Actually lifted that horse up.  If the horse hadn’t had his “clothes” on, he would have been one dead horse.  There was so much wrong with that picture, I didn’t know what to do.  Look away.  That was it.  Look away.

Oddly, this did not stop me from eating or drinking.  What kind of person am I?  Good grief.  But I had a long walk and was famished.  In my defense.  Didn’t bother the Rayman either.  Except he watched.  Said it was ore humane than the way we butcher our cows.  He read that the meat is donated to the poor.  Harumph.

We did walk all around the city center along with about 100,000 other people.  People in wheelchairs being pushed by their family members or caretakers.  Babies buggyed.  Dogs walked.  Really old people with canes.  Everyone was going somewhere.  So unlike the way we live.  And this was at 8:00 at night.  Old couples arm and arm.  Few people smoking.  One runner.  Mostly just walkers.  It was amazing.  Rayman and I have decided that when we return home, we are going to walk to the wharf for dinner or drinks or a movie and walk home.  It is so healthy.  Didn’t see but one or two obese people.  People here are in great shape.  Oh, what a night.

One other observation.  The city planners know what they are doing here.  There are expansive parks.  Muy arborles (I just broke into spanish).  Trees everywhere.  Rose gardens.  Wonderful public transit.  Even special lanes for bike riders that are cordoned off from the autos.  And I just love driving around the roundabouts.  Once, twice, three times a lady.  Just keep going around until you decide which way to go.

While composing this work, I jumped on the internet to see what was happening and also to email our fellow travelers that we will see here.  I wrote, “see you Friday”.  One of our friends wrote back, “Didn’t you mean Saturday?”  Gulp.  No.  Actually.  I meant Friday.  But if we show up on Friday, we’ll be alone.  Saturday is the day.  OMG.  Talk about planning.  We’re a day ahead of ourselves.  Well.  The good news is we can discover and visit another somewhere.  And it will be fun to figure that out.  I read about a mountain we can visit that has a tram.  And you can walk back down.  Do we dare?  What could go wrong?