Weekend

Saturday was a relaxing day.  I took a long nap, watched a movie and did some work.  I was trying to save up my energy for Sunday, when I went to Bilbao with a friend of mine who was in town from the US for the conference we were hosting last week.  We made plans to hang out Sunday, even though it was supposed to be over 90 degrees.

We didn't have much of a plan, just to go to Bilbao and maybe head to the Guggenheim.  We met in San Sebastián in the morning and took a city bus to the bus station, where we took a bus to Bilbao.  We walked about a mile to the Guggenheim.  And it was 90 degrees.  We bought our tickets and headed to the cafe to get something to drink.  We ordered something we thought would be delicious and refreshing, but was, instead bitter, and not refreshing.  Alas.  We wandered around the museum for a couple of hours, and then headed out for pintxos.  We found a pretty authentic place (with no air conditioning) close by and got a few pintxos (including my beloved "boquerones" - anchovies marinated in lemon juice, olive oil, and garlic.  Even if you don't think you like anchovies, you would love these guys).  We then set out for another walk. We wandered through the center of town into Bilbao's Parte Vieja.  It was a really nice walk in spite of being a trillion degrees outside.  We then walked back to the bus station where we had to wait a while for our bus back.  All in all it was a nice trip, though I got back home exhausted and probably dehydrated from the super hot temperatures (according to the local newspapers, it reached over 100 degrees yesterday).

Today it's supposed to reach the mid-90s again, which is highly uncommon for the Basque Country.  Beach people are very, very happy about this.  I am slightly less so since my apartment doesn't have air conditioning.  I did succeed in turning the place into a cave by shutting all my shades during the day yesterday.  It was cool enough last night that between the shades, my open windows, and my almost completed blanket instead of my duvet, I was able to sleep pretty well.  The funniest part of this is that people were whining about how it "only" got down to 19 degrees last night (around 66 degrees Fahrenheit).  After temperatures in the high 90s, I was quite happy with 66 degrees.

This weekend also marked the first weekend of summer, meaning the tourists are here in force.  It's a little bit crazier than I would like here, and it will be harder to find seats for pintxos, etc., but I'm sure after 4 summers in Wrigleyville, I'll survive.