Una vuelta española
‘Welcome to Spain,’ I say to Ryan as we pass the sign that says Comunidad de Aragon, having just emerged from a long tunnel. We emerge into a cloud, the misty fog surrounding us. From the other side of the tunnel, we could stare into the distance at the clouds settling over the hills. Now we are amongst them.
‘It did get sort of dark and depressing as soon as we got into Spain,’ Ryan remarks.
We have left the greenery of Basque Country behind. This is emphasised in an instant, as we turn along a bridge, a sweeping expanse of desolation to our right.
‘Let’s pull over,’ I say, and we do. We get out and explore, take pictures. It’s a dried riverbed, I think. I walk down a hill of clay dotted with river rocks. Atop one there is something’s skull, teeth still intact.
‘You should come over this way,’ Ryan tells me, so I follow him. There are abandoned buildings, but people in them.
‘It’s wicked fucking eerie,’ I say, ‘What is it?’
‘It’s a hot spring.’ And then I see the bathers, and the mist rising from the presumably sulphurred water clicks. It’s a hot spring.
Last night we went out for our final round of pintxos, to send ourselves off in style and bid farewell to Basque Country, to beautiful San Sebastián. We found one pintxos bar with so many options you tick them off on a piece of paper. I get every single vegetarian option, of which there are four. I drink txakoli, more of the local white varietal, and Ryan drinks cervezas. In the morning I am feeling sentimental, and I take pictures of our breakfast and hotel views. I will miss this place, but I also feel like I will be back someday. Maybe it will be another fifteen years before I return to Spain. How much will it have changed by then? Fifteen years ago there we not this many vegetarian options; now there are even vegan ones. The napkins are better, real napkins now. I am glad that Ryan gets to experience the wax papery ones just the once, at Bar Gorriti, where he had his best pintxo.
We get on the road a little early, so we can arrive in Barcelona between 15 h and 16 h. We’ll settle and have an evening, nothing too rushed. It will take us 6 hours or so to drive there, taking some squiggly roads along the way.
We have a beautiful day for a drive. It’s sunny, drying the roads from yesterday’s rain. Some kind of tree I don’t know, tall and slender with dark bark, turns a burnt yellow and sticks up in copses along the fields, or on the hillsides. On the hills farther in the distance, other trees dot the greenery with autumnal colours.
Una vuelta española, a Spanish road trip. It’s not exactly what we planned, but sometimes you just gotta roll with the punches.
Aragón is what you picture when you picture the remnants of the Kingdom of Spain, if you picture the remnants of the Kingdom of Spain. Here or Castile. There are semi-abandoned hilltop castles. Olive orchards are interspersed with vineyards. The land is a dark green-brown; the sky blue with perfect clouds, the sun warming my skin even in mid-November.
We turn down a straight and it’s too perfect. We pass a spot that would be good for pictures and I ask Ryan to turn around. ‘We should stop for pictures,’ I tell him, ‘And I wanna taste that dirt.’ ‘Taste that dirt!?’ ‘Yeah, so I can be reminded of it when drinking rioja.’ Terroir is a true thing; you can smell a place, taste its soil, and be reminded of it when drinking wine from there. The grapes take it all in. It’s why natural wine is better; you can taste the place in it, the sense of self, rather than trying to conform to everyone else’s expectations.
‘I think we should name the car Giuseppe,’ I say, and ‘OK’ Ryan replies. ‘Giuseppe.’
When we stop for gas we switch and I drive. Giuseppe has some struggles on the hills and I have to shift all the way down to fourth to keep up the acceleration. In the tunnels I miss my car; her engine would sound so good in these acoustics. She’s probably cold back in Boston. I start daydreaming of driving while driving.
Driving in Spain is fun for the novelty, at least. I speed a little, but only a little, unwilling to complicate things further. Siri reminds us when there are speed cameras coming up, which I am lucky enough to mostly miss until we get into Barcelona. ‘100 kilometre speed camera ahead,’ Siri says as I’m going 135, ‘Please watch your speed.’ I slow, with traffic. Ryan got more of the winding driving, and we stick to highways mostly since it’s a long drive, 6 hours or so. But this is Spain. National highways or autovías appear and disappear in a rotary, which they call rotundas here. I get some good roads in myself, some without lines, once while passing a lorry coming the opposite way which was a little exciting. There’s not a lot of traffic in the middle of the day this Wednesday. The cars stay surprisingly to the right, keeping right except to pass. It makes driving pleasant, but it makes it a little hard not to race, not to try to pass each car after the other. In Barcelona there’s more traffic. I’m comfortable by now with the car. I end up in an exit-only lane accidentally, and turn my blinker on and throw it into fourth to cut back into traffic at the last minute. It’s not quite a low enough gear (although it would have been fine in my car). The truck behind me doesn’t seem to mind, and I wave in gratitude. ‘Jesus Christ,’ Ryan exclaims, and I contrast his response with yours the time I missed the turn onto Storrow. ‘That’s fine, we can just turn here instead,’ you said, or something like it. I was expecting criticism, but instead received only support. I noted this contrast, and how it made me feel. It made me realise I didn’t have to be self-critical. It made me stop worrying. It made me able to relax. To let it go. To move on. It was also the truth. It was indeed fine that I missed that turn. And Ryan and I are fine now. But your response of support was such a surprise, so different that I still carry it with me. I remind myself that we are fine. I am not self-critical. I relax. I let it go. I keep driving, competently.
When we had booked our hotel, they offered a bouquet of flowers upon arrival for an additional fee, which I add to our reservation, with a request to make them as orange as possible, please. If the questions is flowers, then the answer is always yes. Hotel Neri delivers. The staff are friendly, in a genuine way. We chat with the porter Tomás in our way to our room. ‘Bilbao?’ he asks, ‘Did you find it dark?’ Spaniards all seem to think of Bilbao as dark, dingy, post-industrial. It’s certainly not as pretty as San Sebastián, that’s for sure.
We sip our welcome drinks on our balcony, where there is an outdoor tub. I forgot that’s why I insisted on staying here. When I get a passport again, I’m going to celebrate by drinking champagne in an outdoor tub.
I want to settle, unpack. Ryan tries to rush me, but I remind him that it’s barely 17 h; nothing will be getting started here for another few hours at least. I lay out my outfits for our final few days and take a shower to wash the travel off me.
We head to our hotel bar for a cocktail before going out, since it’s still a little early for Spain. With our cocktails, they bring a complementary tapas of olives. They’re the best olives we have all trip—deep green, their oil a little spicy, a little sweet.
We head to tapas at La Alcoba, but they’re full, so they point us to their sister location two doors down, La Alcoba Azul. The same menu, they say. How odd, but it works for us. I get what I’ve been enjoying all trip: Tomato bread, olives, cheese. We get patatas bravas too. We’re seated next to a group of guys with Irish accents, but they’re not friendly. They’re Northern Irish. Protestants sure. I’m glad to have a Spanish SIM so I can text my little brother to talk shit in real time.
We end up at Zim, my second favourite spot this trip. No fotos, no tarjetas. No pictures, cash only. The proprietor points this out to us as we take a seat at his bar. He’s an older man, a classy gent. I respect his requests, and his bar. It’s still early, 20:30, but we don’t want to be out too late tonight anyway. We ask about some wine and sit and talk. The wine is very good. I get something local and it’s fruity, but not jammy. Like blueberries, with a little spice. I notice the proprietor observing the way Ryan and I drink and talk about wine. It’s not too busy in the bar. There are some tourists, and some locals. The women next to us are sharing a bowl of olives, and I ask how they are. ‘We know how important a good olive is,’ they say, as they offer me one. It’s good, but still not as good as the ones from our hotel bar. A tourist leaves the restroom and the proprietor asks her to close the door, but she doesn’t hear him. I pop up to help.
He brings us a house tapas. ‘No one is vegan, vegetarian?’ he asks, and I say that I am. He slides what I thought was tomato bread away from me, but I decide I’m going to try it anyway. It’s sobrasada, the house sausage, spread on toast. It tastes of smoked paprika. The texture is creamy, the pork fat marbling in my mouth. ‘Your stomach is going to be upset,’ the proprietor jokes. I wonder whether it will. I finish the second bite of toast regardless; I don’t want to let it go to waste. When in Rome.
It’s so dead the proprietor pours himself a glass of cava. I catch his eye and we share a laugh. He says, ‘What to do but drink?’ and I hold up my glass in a toast. ‘Salut.’ I ask him his same. Francesc. He’s Catalonian. Someone rolls in on a bike and folds it up in the corner, chatting away with Francesc. What to do but drink.
We leave after our second glass of wine, having almost exhausted our cash. When we ask for la quenta, the bill, Francesc takes out a graphite pencil and writes directly on the marble bar. ‘First round, second round. Diez y noventa.’ We hand him our total. We wander back through mediaeval streets to our hotel on this warm night. Salut.