First, we found a significant scratch on our rental car when we left for the airport at 4:30am. Someone must have taken the corner a little too sharply and scraped the bumper. This is easy to do on these narrow streets with less than desirable parking spaces. We were quite surprised that no more damage was done, to be honest. We buffed out what we could, and now we wait and hope no-one notices...
Second, as a result of poor signage at the Barcelona Airport, together with almost half of the other passengers from the flight, we got stuck in an airlock trying to get our luggage from the conveyer belt. Luckily, there were some Spanish speakers amongst us (and no...I am not suggesting it was me :) :) :) ), and we managed to get out and walk around the outside of the terminal to be led in through the back door and into the correct baggage claim area.
Third, we were told by the car rental company that we were not insured to travel anywhere in France, which temporarily put our plans in jeopardy.
Fourth, we got stung 30 euros for road tolls on a small section of road between Barcelona and Zaragoza. We quickly learnt to take the non-toll routes, and even though they are longer, they were also much prettier.
Fifth, we ended up in a small town called Lleida for a coffee and breakfast stop. Please, do yourselves a favour and don't go there. The whole town smelled like human faeces, the coffee was ordinary and the croissant inedible.
But, you take the good with the bad. On the positive note, we got upgraded to a brand new A3 Audi for this leg of our trip, found a much nicer place to eat in Zaragoza, scored awesome accommodation in Pamplona and watched a stage of the famous La Vuelta from the top of a mountain. So...no real complaints.
This is Zaragoza - 5th largest city in Spain. Quite pretty, some streets looked a lot like Paris. It has a very big piazza called Basilica del Pilar. It is a huge rectangular area and features superb architecture and sculptures.
This is the town on the foothills of the mountain climb of Stage 17 of La Vuelta 2018. We parked our car in there and walked up about 6km to steak out a spot inside the last 2km of the climb to the finish.
There were signs like these everywhere - a real sign of patriotism from the Basque people.
Here is a taste of the atmosphere we experienced during the race. Not easy to describe in words. Rafal Majka was in the leading group and we got the chance to wish him 'Sto Lat' for his birthday that day :)
Though we were not quick enough to snap a shot of Richie Port, we gave him a well deserved cheer on and took this ripper of the great man Peter Sagan.
We quite enjoyed Pamplona, too, although we were only there briefly. We arrived quite late to check into our hotel (which happened to host some of the rider teams the following day) and were heading out in the morning to catch the race in time. However, we did manage to venture out into the town and had some fantastic tapas / pintxos.
Following the race, we stayed at a country hotel near Bilbao. It was more of a big farm house with rooms to rent. This was the view from our window:
Today, on our way to San Sebastian, we spent a few hours in Bilbao. We were both very impressed with this town/city of >300,000 people. It is interesting, stylish and sophisticated. A superb blend of the old and the new.
We took the obligatory picture in front of the famous Guggenheim museum:
There was something different to look at around every corner:
Even the view over the train lines was nice:
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