{"id":2171,"date":"2014-07-30T17:53:06","date_gmt":"2014-07-30T17:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bretandemily.com\/?p=2171"},"modified":"2016-06-30T18:25:31","modified_gmt":"2016-06-30T18:25:31","slug":"espana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bretandemily.com\/ireland\/?p=2171","title":{"rendered":"ESPANA!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bret and I started our adventure in Santander, Spain.\u00a0 We had a great hotel near the beach, but we spent much of the first day navigating the public transportation system to pick up our rental car.\u00a0 Beware of renting cars in Spain…\u00a0 it turned out to be a little more expensive than we were expecting,\u00a0 but in the end it was worth it. Bret had a rough night the evening before we were reunited at the his conference’s last hurrah gala, so we took it easy that night. We had a\u00a0 nice evening walk followed by a delicious seafood dinner overlooking the ocean.<\/p>\n

The next morning we made our way through Bilbao to Gaztelugatxe.\u00a0 It is a little islet that is just barely connected to the mainland at low tide.\u00a0 The church up at the top dates back to the 10th century, but its current form was rebuilt in the early 1980s after a fire.\u00a0 All along the bridge to the mainland there are plaques dedicated to people who have survive ship wrecks.\u00a0 It was a bit a of hike to get down there and the stairs to the church were closed for renovations, but it was really lovely.<\/p>\n

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Next we stopped in a small town call Mutriku.\u00a0 We had planned to stay the night there, but it turned out the hotel I booked us into was actually located about 20 miles further down the coast.\u00a0 oops.\u00a0 The town looked really lovely from high above and we saw the craziest water surfing device…\u00a0 the guy is on a platform (attached to boots on his feet) that shoots water out the bottom.\u00a0 He got up in the air about 15 feet and could dive down into the water and come shooting back up.\u00a0 It looked pretty fun.<\/p>\n

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We had wanted to get down to the waterfront, but we were thwarted at every turn by dead ends and one way streets, so we finally decided to abandon our mission and head on to Getaria, where we stayed the night in a beautiful little hotel and got to eat breakfast overlooking the ocean.\u00a0 After breakfast, we were off to San Sebastian.\u00a0 We splurged for a beachfront hotel in San Sebastian and it was worth it.\u00a0 We had a long walk along the lovely beach and we hiked up a hill to get a spectacular vista of the whole town.<\/p>\n

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We also spent some time eating pintxos in the main square.\u00a0 I made friends with a poor, little, crippled albino pigeon, but Bret wasn’t as taken with him.<\/p>\n

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We also had some rain while we were there.\u00a0 Bret already posted his great pictures. <\/a><\/p>\n

Next up was Haro. Haro is a city in the northern part of the Rioja country and there many wineries there.\u00a0 My sister and I went to Haro in 2007 when we did a trip across northern Spain.\u00a0 Kim and I had no luck finding any winery tours or tasting rooms, however.\u00a0 Back then you really needed to have appointments if you wanted to visit wineries.\u00a0 I was not going to make that mistake twice. We got up early the following morning, so we could get to Haro for a 10am winery tour appointment at Roda.\u00a0 The ride up had only a couple of wrong turns and some pretty incredible vistas.\u00a0 We had planned to catch a bite for breakfast on the road and had no luck, so we toured Roda on an empty stomach and were already a little giddy by the end of our wine tasting.<\/p>\n

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We went straight to lunch after the tour and found the same restaurant that Kim and I had eaten lunch at seven years ago.\u00a0\u00a0 The specialty of the house is slow cooked lamb, but if you want a special treat, you can order a sheep skull…\u00a0 brain and tongue included!<\/p>\n

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We finished out the day with a few more wine tastings.\u00a0 Haro has definitely embraced wine tourism since I was last here.\u00a0 Tasting rooms rivaled some of our favorites in Oregon wine country.\u00a0 The wine was pretty delicious too!<\/p>\n

The next day we were off once again. We drove through the high plains back to the coast mountains in Basque country.\u00a0 The scenery was AMAZING!! We stopped for a quick walk in the woods.<\/p>\n

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We spent our last night at a really lovely hotel in the middle of nowhere, Aire de Ruesga<\/a>.\u00a0 It had quite a view and plenty of nice country roads to wander.<\/p>\n

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For our last day in Spain, we drove up through the Parque Natural Collados del As\u00f3n to the Mirador del G\u00e1ndara, which is a platform that is suspended high above the source of the Gandara River.\u00a0 The park is well maintained by a flock of sheep.<\/p>\n

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The drive back down to Santander had some dramatic views too!<\/p>\n

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We got one more walk in at the beach after lunch, then hitched a plane back home to Cork.\u00a0 What an incredible place to visit… hope to get back there someday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bret and I started our adventure in Santander, Spain.\u00a0 We had a great hotel near the beach, but we spent much of the first day navigating the public transportation system to pick up our rental car.\u00a0 Beware of renting cars in Spain…\u00a0 it turned out to be a little more expensive than we were expecting,\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bretandemily.com\/ireland\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bretandemily.com\/ireland\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bretandemily.com\/ireland\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bretandemily.com\/ireland\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bretandemily.com\/ireland\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2171"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/bretandemily.com\/ireland\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2912,"href":"https:\/\/bretandemily.com\/ireland\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171\/revisions\/2912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bretandemily.com\/ireland\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bretandemily.com\/ireland\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bretandemily.com\/ireland\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}