St. Jean Pied de Port—Getaria

I guess it’s no surprise that we got up early, while it was still dark and hit the road.  We were shocked to find our roommate already awake and pondering whether or not to begin her journey to Santiago de Compostela. A thunderstorm had been raging for much of the night and it was still raining pretty hard.  I think she was looking for encouragement, so we provided it. We told her to stay in bed and wait for the rain to stop and then said goodbye.

The dark rainy roads were not the best driving conditions and during the first 30 minutes we were all wishing we had taken our own advice and stayed in bed until the rain stopped.  A boulangerie was open so we stopped for coffee and that changed everything. Back on the road, the sun was starting to appear, the clouds had cleared from my head and it stopped raining as well.  The rest of our trip to Biarritz was easy.

We dropped our rental car off at the airport and caught a shuttle to 
San Sebastián, just across the border in Spain, where another car 
was waiting for us. It was a short drive to Getaria, our home for the next week.  

Parking was available right along the beach and looking up from the car we could see our apartment on the edge of a cliff.  Excited, we hopped, skipped and jumped the long way up to our street.  “How is the luggage getting up here?” I thought. Our host, Pili, met us on the the street and guided us up to our apartment on the 3rd and 4th floors of the building. “How is the luggage getting up here?” I 
thought.  Pili was exuberant and genuinely keen on helping us in five 
languages all at once.  Watching her was like a game of fractured charades.  Enthusiastic gestures involving her arms, legs and face were punctuated only by non sequiturs in Basque, Spanish, French, Italian, & some English. Asking for clarification resulted in same pantomime with more effusive spoken foreign language sub titles. Pili persisted with her heartfelt kindness and we eventually understood that:

1. Our car would be towed soon if we didn’t move it from the beach road.
2. We could drive our car up the narrow cobble-stone street to her apartment if         a) no one was coming from the other way b) our mirrors didn’t stick out too far and c) we could somehow make a 12-point turn, and drive out before anyone noticed us,
3. Only open the windows on one side of the apartment at a time otherwise something resembling the Tasmanian Devil (from the Bugs Bunny Show) will happen.

There were other important things she told us but we never found out what they were.

We unpacked, snapped some pictures of our incredible view and 
then headed out to explore the town of narrow streets and delicious smells.  The smells were of fish grilling in the streets and of pinxos (tapas—but don’t use that word in a Basque bar or you’ll never get served).  We stopped, sampled a few pinxos and then continued our exploration. We all noticed more kids out being active in Spain, more than we noticed in France.   After supper, we walked around the harbour where Laurel and Betty put their hands in the water then we wended our way back home vowing to all get a good night sleep, which seemed somewhat foreshadowing?