Tag: Spain

Plans change, sometimes by accident.  We had planned to go to the nearby city of San Sebastian to do some sight seeing.  Before we left we thought we could knock out a load of clothes.  Well that did not work out the way we thought it would.  The washer we used was the slowest washer we have run into in 3 continents, with nothing going wrong it took over an hour and half to complete it’s cycle.  Then we put the clothes in the only dryer, and inserted our coin expecting it to tell us it would take 40 or 50 minutes to dry the clothes,  it said 120 minutes, we thought how nice of them as no dryer could take 2 hours to dry a medium sized load of clothes, we were very wrong.  It ran the full 2 hours, and then we hung the clothes out to finish drying.  By the time the clothes washing was done it was too late to go to San Sebastian so we just relaxed for the rest of the day.   It was a little frustrating, but at the end of the day we probably needed the rest, as we have been on the move constantly for 18 days.  

In the early evening we walked into town to get some groceries (i.e. wine).  It was a nice evening and we noticed that most of the town was out moving around, groups of children, adults, old men, and old women in groups conversing and enjoying themselves.  It was the same last night, and is a nice cultural difference that we envied a little.

We came back to a nice conversation with our English neighbors.  Ton made dinner and we drank some of our groceries before settling in to watch some Netflix Ron downloaded today in between washing and drying.

After 16 days in France we finally reached Spain.  We could have spent the entire trip in France, and enjoyed ourselves, but this trip was supposed to be about Spain.  So we finally decided to head south. 

Except for one pit stop to put in just enough fuel to make it safely to Spain, we powered thru about 280km’s of driving.  We only put in enough fuel to make it to Spain because France is now the holder of the record for the most expensive fuel in the EU.  We have been paying €1.45 per liter, that is around $6.80 per gallon give or take.  The first fuel station we saw in Spain had diesel at €1.15 per liter so we had a little celebration.

We had planned a photo op at the border between France and Spain, but it did not happen.  The border was invisible, we did not know we had crossed into Spain until Ron noticed the road signs were suddenly in Spanish, and Basque.  There was not even a sign welcoming us to Spain.

We had a nice drive down the coast to a small fishing village called Orio.  We are parked a couple hundred yards from a very nice beach, surrounded by very tall hills on both sides.  In fact guys parajump from the hills above the beach and circle around for 10 or 15 minutes before landing next to the RV park.

In the evening we walked into the town proper, and kept looking for the old town, all we saw were modern condo’s and wide new streets.  This area has been having a second home boom in the last decade or so, and the construction is very modern, quite different than France.  After wandering down to the old fishing port we finally caught a glimpse of the old town, but it is tiny compared to the modern town.