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shewhomustWe should, of course, have been helping ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
desperance launch his several books, but unaccountably we find ourselves in a parador in Sos del Rey Catolico, getting used to Spanish hours and hardly even looking at our watches to see if the restaurant is open yet. But when I last wrote, we were still on the ferry...
The voyage was smooth, in every sense: well, it could have been better if the paid-by-the-hour wi-fi had permitted me to use my time as required, instead of in a single block; and if the conection had worked throughout the ship, or even as extensively as advertised. What is it with wi-fi? If it didn't exist, we'd make do. I wasn't really expecting a connection on board ship, but because it was on offer (and OK, I had paid for it) I grumbled because it didn't reach the comfortable seat I had chosen in the bar. The next night at the quite fancy hotel in Bilbao I felt cheated because the free wi-fi was in the lobby, while our room had a secure connection we would have had to pay for (we didn't bother). Next night again, I wrote these notes sitting in the perfectly pleasant bar of a hotel we chose because of its lovely location, failing to get onto the internet. If they just said no, sorry, we don't have wi-fi, we could forget it and read a book or put our feet up in our room or... Eventually we got online, and on our last night there I even found a connection in our bedroom, when all I was trying to do was download some photos - and was eveWell, anyway, it is lovely to be able to keep in touch when we are on holiday, and when it works smoothly it's miraculous. But when it doesn't, oh, the frustration*.
But our little cabin was comfortable, and pleasantly cool: I slept better than I had for days. The sea was calm (or the ship was well-stabilised, or both). In the morning we sampled the entertainments. I don't include under this heading the wine and tapas tasting in the shop that we went to the previous evening, because its purpose was surely promotional.
But the talk by someone from ORCA about the cetaceans we might see on our crossing was fun (dolphin Fact of the Day: dolphins "hear" with their sonar by sensing the vibrations in their lower jaws). And indeed we did see some cetaceans, in the sense that someone would point to a disturbance in the water half a mile away, and identify the whale or dolphin that was causing it.
The place for dolphin spotting is the top deck, which is also adjacent to the kennels: I don't think I've ever been on a ship with kennels before. Watching people walking their dogs back and forth on deck made me expect Fred and Ginger to stroll into view.
The talk was followed by "Spanish with Paco", which we attended because though we weren't likely to learn much in one hour, it couldn't hurt,and we might pick up some pointers about how to pronounce the phrases in the phrase book. It turned out to be an hour of genuine entertainment. Paco told us that he is not a teacher, but he was enthusiastic about his subject (I suspect he volunteered for this job) and he communicates his enthusiasm to his audience. He is not a linguist, either, and he isn't Spanish, but Mexican. He speaks Spanish, he told us, while the people we would be talking to in Spain would speak Castellano. I know the dominant form of Spanish is Castellano, but I wonder whether its speakers think f it as 'not-Spanish'? Also whether Brittany Ferries is disgorging boatloads of Brits with Mexican accents into the capital of Spain's Basque country?
After this we decided we were up for lunch in the ship's fancy restaurant, and that was fun, too. The most memorable course was the dessert, and not in an entirely good way: a selection of fruit sorbets is a pleasant way to end a meal, and there's no harm in adding a splash or two of fruit sorbet. There's no need to serve it on a special palette-shaped plate, and call it 'The Painter's Palette'. The wineglass with the griottes poêlées on the side was pointless cruelty. I was intrigued by what frying the griottes would add to the dish, but in fact I couldn't tell the difference: they weren't hot, they weren't crispy, they weren't caramelised, and their sour cherry tartness, which is the whole point, was too sour alongside the sorbets, while it made their fruity freshness taste over-sweet. I hate it when a really interesting idea turns out to be a bad one (the buttery little - coin-sized - shortbread biscuits were delicious, though).
We disembarked in Bilbao, whose Basque name is Bilbo. There are Bilbobuses and Bilboats.
The streets were full of people in red and white striped shirts: it's not Sunderland, but Atletico Bilbao, and their big home match has made our short visit to the town even shorter, since we spent much too long organising our parking. I felt very at home.
We walked through the park and along the river, admiring all the buildings, but the Guggenheim most of all. Then back down the Gran Via, pausing at a fountain where kids were playing football and skateboarding in the dark.
Tapas at a little cafe where they were nice to us - it's not the words we don't understand, it's the culture (what to order, how much, do we go to the bar or does it come to us...?)
durham_rambler found a game of pelota on the television.
The breakfast buffet included - among other things (durham_rambler pronounced his cooked breakfast "strange, but quite OK") = goat's milk cheese and quince paste, so I was happy.
It then took us the best part of an hour to retrieve the car from the car park at the commercial centre - and we didn't even start until the centre opened, unlike the couple who had hoped to set off early for Malaga. But we had time for a short stroll around the old town, less spectacular than the new but still interesting, and which enabled us to start our exploration of the pilgrim road at the church of Santiago in its central square.
All the photos of Bilbao
*As for example I wrote this last night but am struggling to post it this morning fromdurham_rambler's machine, as mine isn't talking to LJ.
desperance launch his several books, but unaccountably we find ourselves in a parador in Sos del Rey Catolico, getting used to Spanish hours and hardly even looking at our watches to see if the restaurant is open yet. But when I last wrote, we were still on the ferry...The voyage was smooth, in every sense: well, it could have been better if the paid-by-the-hour wi-fi had permitted me to use my time as required, instead of in a single block; and if the conection had worked throughout the ship, or even as extensively as advertised. What is it with wi-fi? If it didn't exist, we'd make do. I wasn't really expecting a connection on board ship, but because it was on offer (and OK, I had paid for it) I grumbled because it didn't reach the comfortable seat I had chosen in the bar. The next night at the quite fancy hotel in Bilbao I felt cheated because the free wi-fi was in the lobby, while our room had a secure connection we would have had to pay for (we didn't bother). Next night again, I wrote these notes sitting in the perfectly pleasant bar of a hotel we chose because of its lovely location, failing to get onto the internet. If they just said no, sorry, we don't have wi-fi, we could forget it and read a book or put our feet up in our room or... Eventually we got online, and on our last night there I even found a connection in our bedroom, when all I was trying to do was download some photos - and was eveWell, anyway, it is lovely to be able to keep in touch when we are on holiday, and when it works smoothly it's miraculous. But when it doesn't, oh, the frustration*.
But our little cabin was comfortable, and pleasantly cool: I slept better than I had for days. The sea was calm (or the ship was well-stabilised, or both). In the morning we sampled the entertainments. I don't include under this heading the wine and tapas tasting in the shop that we went to the previous evening, because its purpose was surely promotional.
But the talk by someone from ORCA about the cetaceans we might see on our crossing was fun (dolphin Fact of the Day: dolphins "hear" with their sonar by sensing the vibrations in their lower jaws). And indeed we did see some cetaceans, in the sense that someone would point to a disturbance in the water half a mile away, and identify the whale or dolphin that was causing it.
The place for dolphin spotting is the top deck, which is also adjacent to the kennels: I don't think I've ever been on a ship with kennels before. Watching people walking their dogs back and forth on deck made me expect Fred and Ginger to stroll into view.
The talk was followed by "Spanish with Paco", which we attended because though we weren't likely to learn much in one hour, it couldn't hurt,and we might pick up some pointers about how to pronounce the phrases in the phrase book. It turned out to be an hour of genuine entertainment. Paco told us that he is not a teacher, but he was enthusiastic about his subject (I suspect he volunteered for this job) and he communicates his enthusiasm to his audience. He is not a linguist, either, and he isn't Spanish, but Mexican. He speaks Spanish, he told us, while the people we would be talking to in Spain would speak Castellano. I know the dominant form of Spanish is Castellano, but I wonder whether its speakers think f it as 'not-Spanish'? Also whether Brittany Ferries is disgorging boatloads of Brits with Mexican accents into the capital of Spain's Basque country?
After this we decided we were up for lunch in the ship's fancy restaurant, and that was fun, too. The most memorable course was the dessert, and not in an entirely good way: a selection of fruit sorbets is a pleasant way to end a meal, and there's no harm in adding a splash or two of fruit sorbet. There's no need to serve it on a special palette-shaped plate, and call it 'The Painter's Palette'. The wineglass with the griottes poêlées on the side was pointless cruelty. I was intrigued by what frying the griottes would add to the dish, but in fact I couldn't tell the difference: they weren't hot, they weren't crispy, they weren't caramelised, and their sour cherry tartness, which is the whole point, was too sour alongside the sorbets, while it made their fruity freshness taste over-sweet. I hate it when a really interesting idea turns out to be a bad one (the buttery little - coin-sized - shortbread biscuits were delicious, though).
We disembarked in Bilbao, whose Basque name is Bilbo. There are Bilbobuses and Bilboats.
The streets were full of people in red and white striped shirts: it's not Sunderland, but Atletico Bilbao, and their big home match has made our short visit to the town even shorter, since we spent much too long organising our parking. I felt very at home.
We walked through the park and along the river, admiring all the buildings, but the Guggenheim most of all. Then back down the Gran Via, pausing at a fountain where kids were playing football and skateboarding in the dark.
Tapas at a little cafe where they were nice to us - it's not the words we don't understand, it's the culture (what to order, how much, do we go to the bar or does it come to us...?)
durham_rambler found a game of pelota on the television.The breakfast buffet included - among other things (
durham_rambler pronounced his cooked breakfast "strange, but quite OK") = goat's milk cheese and quince paste, so I was happy.It then took us the best part of an hour to retrieve the car from the car park at the commercial centre - and we didn't even start until the centre opened, unlike the couple who had hoped to set off early for Malaga. But we had time for a short stroll around the old town, less spectacular than the new but still interesting, and which enabled us to start our exploration of the pilgrim road at the church of Santiago in its central square.
All the photos of Bilbao
*As for example I wrote this last night but am struggling to post it this morning from
durham_rambler's machine, as mine isn't talking to LJ.
