Over the border to Spain......

San Sebastian. Did anyone not like it? This was the day I thought I was going to die, French coffee having left me doubled up in agony for the morning. Come 2pm I was fine and went for a long walk. Great place, have to go back there.

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Urgh! Don't step in the googie. The Guggenheim in Bilbao, where wool gets pulled over people's eyes on a daily basis. It only served to confirm every prejudice I have about modern art.

The final nail in the coffin came at the Madrid museum of modern art, or whatever it was called.

Me: This is a plank of wood painted blue, what's artistic about it?

Brett: Where's the exit? I've seen enough.

 googie!
Thalamanca! Sorry. Salamanca! The first of 347 different Plaza Mayors we were to walk through in the next few weeks. Was this built in the thixthteenth thentury? Salamanca Plaza Mayor.jpg
Can you see the frog? No, but I could see something else in green, Yolanda the guide looking like a thin lime on legs. Ribbit

The Plaza Mayor at night. Taken just as the words "If you're only going to stay until midnight, don't bother" rang through the air. Mind you, if you drank everything they threw at you (2 for 1) you would have been paralytic.

Getting a cab back from here to the hotel was easy, trying to get the cab driver to understand Mark's not-quite-impeccable Spanish accent wasn't. "Hotel Regio"? "Hotel Recchhhio!". Was Salamanca the place where the hotel was next to the hospital and being refurbished at the time?

 Salamanca Plaza Mayor at night
We pootled along to Portugal as we meandered along the left hand side of continental Europe. But we'd be back.

Want to see some more?

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