Cupcake

Today was an exciting day, filled with basically everything from the entire spectrum. We originally had planned to do the larger jumps between cities just by train but in the last minute, got it in our head to drive and see the country side a bit more. In terms of actual travel time, the two were supposed to take roughly the same amount of time.

We hired the smallest thing that we could find, partly because it was going to be expensive enough as it was, but also because it seemed like our opportunity to drive the most unreliable car on the planet, the fabled Fiat 500. They however did not have one available when we arrived so we got "upgraded" to a cupcake. With seat heating. Because that's useful at these temperatures.

The country side is gorgeous. Trying to somewhat hug the Pyrénées mountains, it seemed to be impossible to look into a direction and not be an awe. If you go to Spain: Get a car and look for yourself!

We also found our various tourist spots on the way. One was a lake with a beautiful colour, a church tower that seemed to be stuck in the middle of the lake, and a bunch of swimming french people. If you go by the car registrations parked out front, it really did appear to be a french only club. And then there was another town on the way which my travel companion thought might be three buildings that looked pretty, turned out to be a little bigger, completely overrun by spanish tourists to the point that the entire city appeared to be one big parking lot.

The home stretch to our accomodation from there on was a bit more … interesting. The road to Bilbao seemed to consist of a fair amount of country side windy roads, all of which we drove in the dark. When we did get on the highway, 120km/h did not feel like a particularly relaxing speed, and on arrival, the street of our hotel was under construction, all the neighbouring streets were parked full to the brim, and the locals at 2 in the morning seemed a little too shady for us to want to park far away and then walk. Spent a bunch of time driving in circles, trying to find the ideal spot and scoping out walking routes that seemed devoid enough of people for us to comfortably walk.