San Sebastian!

Hola amigos! After our short, but sweet stay in Cadiz, we crossed the whole of Spain from South to North. We took a 5 hour train to Madrid and then a sleeper train to San Sebastian. Now, in theory sleeper trains are a great idea. You get to save travel time by sleeping in transit, waking up refreshed and ready for your new city. All I have to say is that it´s good on paper...not in real life. It wasn´t too bad, but far from a restfull night of sleep. We arrived here at 7 in the morning, and unfortunately our Pension was not ready to take us, so we left our stuff and headed to the nearby city of Bilbao, where we had heard of the famed Guggeneheim museum there...definitely worth the hour busride there and back. The architecture of the building had to be its highlight. Built by architect Frank Ghery with amazing computer technology, it was a free-flowing organic form, made of steel, marble, and glass. It was beautiful. Their temporary collection presented Aztec art, and we are experts at it by now. Their small permanent collection was less impressive than we had hoped, but still worth the visit. The content was the 1960s-ish movement of Abstract Expressionism (or "AbEx"), and highlights included works by Rothko. We also loved the ginourmous installation sculptures by Richard Serra. After our trip to Bilbao, we gleefully bummed at the beach, each knocking out a signigicant portion of our current novels.

Today, after doing some laundry (first time, and we needed it...last pair of clean underwear needed it), Nicole took care of booking our tickets to Barcelona on yet another wonderful night train. Her experience at the train station made us seriously doubt the hospitality of Spaniards, as they treated her with total disrespect and attitude. We spent the rest of the day at the beach again, although Nicole forgot her towel and used a make-shift one out of her clothes. We ate popsicles and played in the water...a jolly good time. Tonight we made ourselves a picnic dinner above the ocean as the day moved into dusk.

We´re glad to be going back to Barcelona, if not just for a day, it´s Nicole´s home terf. We are spending the night there tomorrow and then moving along to Marseille, where we begin our French adventure. We are looking forward to it, but admitedly apprehensive about our complete ignorance of the French language. Here are the words we know: Oui, no, crepe, bonjour, merci, and that´s about it. We decided that Crepe is obviously the most important word to know, and plan on using it quite a bit. Hope you are all well.

For the last time in Spain, buenos noches (goodnight, for us at least).