basque country

Compared with the madness of Pamplona, San Sebastian was a breath of fresh air, literally. We had wanted to visit ever since we read Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises together, and it was more beautiful--and more sophisticated-- than we had imagined it. We went straightaway after the running of the bulls and caught a late breakfast at a perfect little bakery across the street from San Sebastian's striking gothic cathedral. There was great shopping to be had--Violet traded her Pamplona whites for a colorful number from the Spanish brand Desigual--and we dipped our toes in the ocean and rode the carousel. It was heaven.

An hour away were distractions of another sort. Back when I was working in art, there was a lot of talk about the Guggenheim Bilbao, most of in the vein of Amazing building. Why would they have put it in that dumpy, industrial town. What a difference a decade and a half makes. The museum was funded by the city of Bilbao in the hopes that it would revitalize a derelict waterfront and draw culture to a place with plenty of money but not enough taste. The gamble seems to have paid off. Glossy pinxto bars and high-end designer shops have cropped up in the neighborhoods surrounding the museum. The town itself feels charmingly Alpine, set as it is amongst green hills and skies given to rain. We took in the collection, then strolled about the center of town, stopping to try some pinxtos, the artfully assembled open-faced sandwiches that anchor the culinary scene in this part of Spain.

A quick note about lodging: For stays of a week or more we usually rent a house or apartment, but for short periods when we are in Spain we love Paradors--old castles and other historical structures that have been converted by the Spanish government into beautiful hotels with modern amenities. We spent three nights at one that was equidistance from Pamplona, San Sebastian, and Bilbao. It hosted Napoleon's army when they were conquering nearby Victoria. I doubt they were a comfortable as we were.

san fermin

Two weeks later, the smell of cheap wine and urine running through the streets of Pamplona is still in our nostrils. If we were hoping to impart life lessons to our four-year-old daughter and teenage nieces, the Festival of San Fermin would have been--and was--brilliantly effective.  But as we were looking for no more than a bit of pageantry in a small Spanish town and the thrill of seeing those powerful, iconic bulls charging through narrow, cobblestoned streets, we left feeling a bit assaulted and relieved to be out of the fray.

mad about gaudi

Within our unforgettable travels this summer, the Sagrada Familia was among the rarest, most memorable places we visited. Antoni Gaudi's ultimate masterpiece, still in progress 84 years after his death, is like another planet, full of unimaginable beauty and reinterpretations of traditional Christian themes. It is especially fascinating to see the progress of color and detail across the church, initially a celestial white, as it approaches completion.

The roof and marble floors were added only recently. On Steve's previous visit a few years ago, he walked on dirt floors and overhead could see the open sky. Now, the gaze is drawn ever upward by spiral staircases at the corners of the nave, toward an oddly magnificent ceiling reminiscent of the canopy of a forest.

The facades outside to the east and west are competing explosions of sculptural interpretations of the life of Christ, with motifs from the natural world incorporated into the scenes in abundance. Gaudi designed the Nativity facade before his death, while Josep Maria Subirachs put his own starkly modern stamp on the style of the Passion facade (you can see Peter mourning his denial of Christ as the cock crows earlier on this page). It is all more than one can properly take in without months or years of contemplation.

We spent an easy afternoon in Parc Guell, a decidedly more secular pursuit from the master of Catalan Modernisme. Gaudi's mark is everywhere in Barcelona--apartment buildings on the Passeig de Gracia, sidewalk tiles throughout the city, and here, in the park he designed at its center.

(And yes, Violet at last got her Roman Holiday haircut, albeit at her mother's hand in a small town in Spain, rather than by a stranger in a quaint Italian barber shop in Rome...)