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Wed Jul 25 2007: Atlantic Pyrenees & Pamplona |
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It was a late start today: 8AM due to me getting to bed at 2AM! Had a quick continental breakfast at The Night Hôtel!, and we actually saw the staff for the first time this visit! We Autorouted about 200kms south to the Spanish border and just before hitting San Sebastian on the coast, detoured back inland to get a small taste of the Atlantic or Western Pyrenees, which are just the foothills to the really high mountains. Right now the plan is to do Spain, north to south, and then double back to France to do the Central Pyrenees properly.
Heading into the Pyrenees
The run to the border was uneventful, you can cover a lot of mileage fast when the speed limit is 130 km/h! Just turn up the tunes on the freshly charged iPods (see previous post) to turn the trip into your own music video! Interesting that the Cypress trees in the north have now given way to another type, I have to do some research to find out what kind of tree this is.
A quilt
The Pyrenees mountains form a natural border between France and Spain, and the scenery changes almost immediately when we get off the Autoroute. We take the first twisty road of the trip, nice sweepers, through the valley where you could see ahead of you lush green-coloured mountains with patchwork squares of farmland lining the faces like a quilt. Just like all the movies and pictures you see, but more vivid. And larger. And cooler.
Pretty...
Hi
Stopped for lunch at a small town along the way and wondered if we were still in France or not. The menu was in French, so yes. After lunch, more twisty roads, this time tighter as the roads climbed up the mountain. One thing about the signs in Europe, when the speed limit for a turn ahead is posted at 30 km/h, you go 30 km/h! Anything more is dangerous. The same sign in North America meant that you could safely take the turn at 60 km/h, maybe 80-90 km/h if you wanted to try touching a knee down. We did the same radius turns in California and those were marked 10 mph!
GPS made us take a wrong turn. That's my bike on the right in the shade. Imagine me trying to turn that beast around and go back down...
At some point, we crossed the French/Spanish border without even knowing it. We pulled up to a T-intersection looking for the sign to Pamplona, and decided to rest in the shade of a building. A big guy in a wifebeater was cooking some rice and beans on a large open pan outside of the building and we started talking - funny how being on bikes makes you so approachable to other people. He spoke French to us, but we found out that he was actually Spanish and that we had just crossed into Spain. Interestingly enough, the building we were sitting on the shade of, was a police station, and he was an on-duty police officer. I don't think they get a lot of crime in those small Spanish villas.
On the border between France and Spain. France is on the left, Spain on the right.
You can tell Spain is the target market for MotoGP sponsors. We saw Dani Pedrosa here!
Of course I'm sure it was him: it was a short Spanish guy filling up his Honda Nuevo at a Repsol station...
One thing we've noticed about the folks in Spain is that they're a lot more friendlier and casual than the French. Also the architecture of the buildings in the old villages change right across the border. Gone are the grey-thatched triangular roofs, now we see buildings topped with terracotta shingles. We continued on the same twisty roads to Pamplona, Neda led the way so I got some nice shots motorcycle shots.
Riding through one of the villages on the Spanish side
We got to Pamplona around 6PM. The GPS led us to the Leyre hotel in the centre of the city and we were glad there were rooms available. As experienced travelers, we've found that most times you can get a room in a hotel if it's early enough on a weekday and the town is small enough. Forget rolling into a touristy-city on a weekend at 10PM looking for a place to crash! Too many bad experiences knocking on hotel door after hotel door begging for a corner to park our weary butts for the night! So tonight, I'm also reserving the next couple of nights (Yay! Our first rest day) in San Sebastian, a coastal resort town near the French/Spanish border. Online, already the rooms were being filled up. I had to book one night with Expedia, and the other night on the hotel website...
Looking up in Pamplona
The streets of Pamplona
Typical streets in downtown Pamplona. I think it was customary to
have the church be the tallest building in the city.
Another MotoGP sponsor! Note the bull making a call to his ladycowfriend...
We wandered around town for a couple of hours. Pamplona's claim to fame obviously is the Running of the Bulls. Turns out we missed the festival by a couple of weeks. You can read the sign outside the bullring that explains how this event originated:
This is the gate the bulls were herded into in San Fermin bull ring
Europe is so classy. I've never seen a Shoppers Drug Mart look this fancy...
Plaza Del Castillo, the main square where everyone hangs out
Every sign and store is geared towards the Bull Run. There seems to be no other economy other than this weeklong event. We bought the official Bull Run 2007 T-shirts for 4 Euros today, that would have costed 5 times that a couple of weeks ago. They had hundreds of them for sale, kind of like the "How to survive Y2K" booksale that Amazon had a couple of years ago...
Typical store in Pamplona, all centred around the bull run
Even the tapas bar we went to had the bull motif. The horns are the levers for the beer taps...
See the guy on the ground behind me? I tripped him...
Checked my e-mail tonight, my dad warned me of very hot weather and wildfires in the south of Spain. Neda only has leathers, we're going to have to hit a motorcycle store maybe and get her some meshwear...
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