Our Lives as Spaniards: Sharing Bilbao, Barcelona and Burgos with Friends

The Bilbao-Barcelona train train is about 5 hours of indolent comfort, well suited to someone who wants to find out what the countryside is like between these two cities-me! On March 15, Tom departed for Roncevalles to begin the Camino de Santiago de Compostela and I took the more indulgent path to Barcelona via train, to meet my sister-in-law Phyl and our mutual friend Beverly. The first part of the day I traveled through countryside Tom would see within a day or two:

Tom, do you really want to walk thru this?

But then the mountains gave way to orchards where SPRING was evident!

The travelin' chicas (Ellen, Bev and Phyl) found their favorite market early in the trip, Mercat Sant Josep/La Boqueria and we made a point of going there every day. I love market places and this has to be one of the best. Fruits, vegetables, meat, cheese, fish....every type of food you can imagine. Bakes goods, carry away foods, dried mushroom stands, sit-down restaurants. Spotlessly clean, stained glass on the front wall, covered. A foodie's dream of heaven.

6 kinds of dried wild mushrooms!

We sent to the sea-side resort of Sitges for a quilting festival:

Rode the funicular to the top of Montjuic. The amazing views of the port were a high point of the trip

as was my visit to the Sagrada Familia Cathedral. Tom and I first visited the cathedral in 1996 when we toured southern Spain with Tommy and Zeph. They didn't come to the cathedral with us-something about being out too late the night before! Designed by Catalan visionary and architect Antoni Gaudi, construction began in 1883 and is expected to be completed by 2041. I was looking forward to seeing what progress had been made in the intervening 17 years, and I wasn't disappointed. I hope my plans to return in 17 years aren't thwarted by age or illness. There don't seem to be adequate words to describe the mixture of grandeur and delicacy of the stone work, nor the delight for eyes in the constantly moving lines and shapes.

Beverly and Phyl came back to Bilbao with me where we partied on for another week, until Phyl felt the call of the office. Thanks, brother Larry, for doing without her for 10 days! Beverly managed to stay for another week or so, during which time we visited many shoe, purse and fabric stores in Bilbao before we drove to Burgos to meet Tom.

Brr...cold and wet in Burgos. We drove about 60 km south of Burgos to see and, more importantly hear, the monks of Santo Domingo de Silos, who incorporate Gregorian chant in their daily worship. We sloshed down to the monastery and toured the cloisters with a monk. It reminded me of sitting in 8th grade catechism class on a Saturday morning! It was Good Friday, so maybe he felt like we needed some extra strength proselytizing. The chanting was ethereal; my only wishes were that it was longer and that the kids in the pew in back of me would shut up and stop kicking the kneeler. On a sunny day, this is what the cloister looks like:

To listen to the Santo Domingo de Silos monks follow this link:

http://www.abadiadesilos.es/escuchar.htm

We drove back to Burgos through a real gully-washer of a storm. David took this fine photo. The water was gushing out between 2 different strata of rock-quite astonishing:

I forded 3 streams in the trusty Peugeot rental car( I love fording streams in cars!!) in order to see a 7th century Visigoth church, Santa Maria Quintanilla de las Viña, which is probably the oldest church in Spain. Over the altar there are some very interesting anthropomorphic carving of the sun and moon, probably indicating pre-Christian worship melding with Christian. The carvings around the building were in surprisingly good shape.