Day 20: Sunday May 6 2007, Sos del Rey Catolico, Spain
Noon position: 42 degrees 29.984' N latitude, 001 degrees 12.928' W longitude (Sos del Rey Catolico, Spain)
Bob: The Hotel MonteAragon had a room with a great view, nice, comfortable beds, marble bathrooms, and even a (useless) bidet, so I guess I expected it to also have a great breakfast buffet. But boy was I wrong! Breakfast was a croissant, a piece of Melba toast with jelly, and one cup of coffee, which was clearly the worst breakfast we had yet had on our tour. It just goes to show that no hotel is perfect, at least not in our price range! After breakfast we hightailed it west and north from Huesca in the direction of Pamplona and soon worked our way through the first outlying range of the Pyrenees. Much to my surprise, between that front range and the main body of the Pyrenees was a broad, fertile valley that reminded me of the Shenandoah Valley back in Virginia, which lies between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the main body of the Appalachian Mountains. This valley in Spain was of the same order of magnitude and we followed it almost all the way to the coastal foothills of the Pyrenees next to the Atlantic Ocean. |
Monika: Today we were going to go northwest from Huesca, past Pamplona to the Atlantic Coast. Southeast of Pamplona was a little village Sos del Rey Catolico that was highly recommended by Frommers. So we decided to make that our first stop. From Huesca we hit the Interstate going north back into the Pyrenees. After about 15 km, the interstate ended and the scenic drive started. Again I was surprised by the sheer cliffs that make up these parts of the Pyrenees. We turned west into the wider valley of the Rio Aragon. There was a lot of farming, mainly wheat it seemed to my highly unknowledgeable self. I enjoyed the "villages on a hill" that ever now and then appeared on either side of the road or even directly in front of the road. |
Bob: Along the way, however, we diverted onto tertiary roads (rough pavement, narrow, no shoulders and no centerline) to visit Sos del Rey Catolico, which had been reported by Frommer's to be a nicely preserved city. As we swung around a promontory above the Aragon River, however, we were surprised to see extensive ruins and we stopped to take a peek. Apparently the ruins were under restoration, and given the decrepit state of the rotted wood beams and crumbling mortar holding the stone walls together, it was not a moment too soon. Still the ruins were quite impressive and we guessed that it was an old fort that controlled the river traffic below. We did find signs that were probably explaining the historical significance of the site, but they were only in Spanish and that left us still guessing. |
Monika: To get to Sos del Rey Catolico we took the scenic road, a 1 1/2 lane road that wound its way around a lake and over a ridge into the next valley. It was, of course, all curves. Coming around one curve we were confronted by the Ultimate ABC ("Another Bloody Castle"). The tower was on a promontory overlooking the Aragon valley and there were several ruins leading from the tower to the church. We snapped our pictures and then were delighted to find a parking area from where we could climb around in the ruins and take pictures. |
Bob: Sos del Rey Catolico turned out to be a beautifully restored and preserved old town on top of a small hill. Parking in front of the Parador (government hotel) there, we had a quick snack from the sandwich ring we had bought at Lidl the day before and then we clambered up and down the narrow, winding streets of the town for about an hour. We first worked our way up to the church that was pretty much at the top of the hill. We were terribly curious about how it looked inside, but it was Sunday morning and a church service was in progress, so we just wandered around the outside. From the church we had a great view of the city spreading out on the hillside below us. The jutting planes of tiled roofs of the small houses gave a curious but very attractive texture to the view out over the city. The tiles are not uniform in color since the newer ones seemed to be more reddish whereas the older ones seemed to have faded due to weathering and the oldest pieces of tile were pitted or even growing pieces of moss. The sides of the houses were different shades of yellow-brown stone that was about the color of adobe buildings in the Southwest U.S. but of a different texture as these buildings were all masonry. |
Monika: After another few thousand curves we saw Sos del Rey Catolico, the ultimate village on a hill. But this little gem was a living community, that had been declared a National Landmark. We parked at the entrance and first had a sandwich to sustain us. Then we went up, up, up. The streets or alleys here go either up or down depending on your point of view. At the top was the church with Sunday services going full blast over a loudspeaker |
Bob: We wound our way back downhill from the church to the Parador, walking around different streets (really alleyways) just to get as many of the unique and fascinating views as possible. I saw a variety of different doors and some folks had already put out their spring flowers for passersby to see and appreciate. If you are ever in the area, you might want to drop in on Sos del Rey Catolico and just walk around a bit. |
Monika: So we didn't look inside the church but climbed still higher to the tower that literally towered over it all. Wherever you looked there were photographic views. It was a lot of fun looking at these old houses and wondering what it would be like to live up here. |
Bob: Continuing on our way west, we finally reached the Atlantic coast at San Sebastian and decided to turn West to find a hotel for a couple of nights. The town of Zarautz was advertised as a tourist spot of some kind and we thought that boded well for having hotels with vacancies in the off season, so we exited there and drove down the main street. As we had expected, we found several hotels, but as we had feared, finding parking spaces was a big problem even though we were not in "high season". I finally found a sign that I think meant "public parking garage" right off the beach and we dove in there to park and look around for a hotel. Just across the street from the garage was the Pension Ekia and that had a room that didn't stink too badly of cigarette smoke. As a plus, the room looked directly out to the beach area and the Atlantic Ocean beyond, so once again we had a room with a nice view. We wandered around Zarautz a bit to locate the Post Office (closed on Sunday, of course) and found both a grocery store and a Chinese "every goes" type of store where Monika scored some really cheap metal forks and spoons. She also found a reasonably good knife so we were well equipped to return to our room and have a nice light supper. |
Monika: From there we bypassed Pamplona and headed straight north to the ocean. This was an interstate heading through the mountains with some interesting signs: i.e., a turtle type truck with a speed sign of 40 over it and two little cars with 120 over them having crashed into the truck. We also enjoyed the runaway truck ramps, which seemed to be gravel, then some tires, and a concrete barrier. If the gravel didn't slow you, the concrete certainly would... We decided to avoid the larger town of San Sebastian and headed west to the next smaller town of Zarautz. Since parking seemed to be a hassle, we decided to just put our car into the municipal parking lot and look for a place to stay. The pension Ekia across from the parking garage had a room at a reasonable rate. So we took the room and decided to leave the car in the garage and relax for a while. Our room had a nice view of the ocean and looking out of the window we were reminded that now we were in Basque country, since the sign seem to be asking for amnesty for ETA and autonomy for the Basque region |
Bob: We read until 8 p.m. but then once again turned out to walk along the beachfront promenade and watch the sunset out over the Atlantic. The sunset was in fact gorgeous. The waves were high enough that surfers were out trying to catch a wave but they generally didn't ride them very far. One guy had a powered parachute rig, though, and he buzzed happily up and down the beach as the sun was setting. It sounded and smelled like a chainsaw engine, but he could fly along just a couple of feet above the surf, almost dangling his feet in it. Looked like fun to me and even Monika was intrigued by it. Finally the sun sank behind a cloud and the lights started to come on along the edge of the promenade. We wandered slowly back to our pension, checking out about 6 different restaurant/bars that had either menus in English or menus using pictures that allowed us to figure out what we would be ordering, which is always a reassuring feeling! Back in our room we each worked on our journals for a bit and then turned in for the night. |
Monika: We went back out around 8 p.m. hoping for a sunset. Our pension was only a block from the beach. But there was about a mile of beach with a promenade alongside the shoreline for the first half mile. We walked along the promenade and by 9 we finally had our sunset. We even watched a paraglider buzzing the surfers. Several restaurants were open but we saw no T-shirt shops. |
| Prolog | Map of Cruise | Map of Spain | Epilog |
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