Live in Spain. Trip 1 to San Sebastian, Bilbao, then France (Bordeaux, Albi and Carcasonne), Then Barcelona

Finally, we have secured a piso (flat/apartment) in Madrid in a great
location (close to the Prado and the Retiro Park) for a great price so
now we can start traveling!!!!

We kick off our travels with a two week journey up to the Spanish and
French Basque regions, then up to Bordeaux, then over to some tiny
medieval towns in southern France around Toulouse and then down to
Barcelona for a couple of days and finally over to Madrid.

We left our apartment in Madrid yesterday morning to catch a train up
north to San Sebastian. It was a 6 1/2 hour train ride, which is
about all the time I can handle on a train. I now know that I cannot
read on the train, whereas Andy can read on a ship in a storm in the
ocean and not have a problem. Anyway, not being able to read just
makes the journey longer for me. Thankfully, the scenery did change
periodically, especially as we started to get into the foothills of
the Pyranees to get to San Sebastian.

We arrived in San Sebastian yesterday late afternoon. It is a
beautiful city. It was nice to see an ocean again (Atlantic Ocean).
The most popular cite for San Sebastian is the promenade across their
beach and looking out onto their small inlet of water and out onto the
ocean. It was such a clean town too (nice change from Madrid). The
Basque region is known to have the best tapas in Spain (they call them
pinxtos here in the native Basque tongue of Euskara). The are also
known for the fresh Cider and a local wine called Txakoli. I was
fortunate to discover Txakoli before we left the states and am very
happy to be in the land of it. It's definitely one of my favorite
wines. Andy even likes it too. The cider is really good too. It's
different than the typical cider you would get at an Irish pub or
something like that. It's very fresh and apparently, you have to drink
it soon after it's poured or it goes bad. We did a txikiteo (tapas
crawl) last night in San Sebastian. I, of course, struggled to find
anything I could eat, so I had many samplings of Tortilla Espanol. (I
will be so sick and tired of Tortlla Espanol well before I even leave
Spain to return the states next year.) I think Andy enjoyed it, it's
different than Madrid. It's a tapas crawl at super speed.

We slept fairly well and woke up today, ate breakfast and got on a bus
to head to Bilbao - home of the Guggenheim Museum. We will be going
tomorrow to see that. In the meantime, we've so far wandered around
Bilbao (another beautiful, clean city) for the day. We were even so
fortunate to eat lunch at a vegetarian restaurant here (yay!!!!
finally, some vegetables and something other than Tortilla Espanol).
It was fabulous. Tonight we will do another txikiteo as Bilbao
competes with San Sebastian for the best pintxos/tapas in Spain.
Andy will have to tell you which town is better, as I will no doubt
have more Tortilla. We will end our day finding some Irish pub to
celebrate what is left of St. Patrick's day. We have both been very
good and have been wearing green all day :)

We're off to the Guggenheim tomorrow!!!