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Salamanca to Carcassone

March 18, 2002

Dear Friends and Family,

The trip is ending. We are heading north and east. We are going to a family gathering in Budapest and from there back home to Kyiv. We are on a timeline. We have to drive near Hungary, find a place to store the car, and take a train to Budapest in a little more than a week. We will sleep in a different country for each of the next five nights.

We started with a 350 kilometer drive from Salamanca to the north coast of Spain, west of Bilbao. The scenery varied from high rolling plains down through mountains, just past the Pico de Europa. The drive varied from easy cruising through the hilly land to rough and twisty paths down toward the coast.

On the plains, there was a string of small towns, each marked with a church steeple or two. Many also had a castle or a fortress, or at least bits and pieces of old walls. We're saturated with old stone walls and buildings, so we barely noticed. We did notice that many of the towns had only dirt streets and were far away from the sophistication of Salamanca.

When we descended through the mountains, we followed a highway that was under construction. Maybe next time it will be easier, but we didn't mind the extra time because the rugged terrain was a break for us. We hadn't seen mountains like this since the Sierra Nevadas down south, beyond Granada. As we got closer to the north coast, open space became rare and many of the towns and villages seemed to be expanding up instead of out because hills and gullies squeezed out buildable space.

Near the coast, we followed the signs to Santillana. While the full name includes a "del Mar", it seemed the sea was always hidden behind hills. Nevertheless we passed through the green coastal hills and found the village easily enough. It was well marked by road signs and a parade of Sunday visitors. We checked in at our Parador hotel and settled in to see what we could see.

Santillana has just a few streets and, from a distance, they look like a picture postcard. There is another postcard setting for the church and a town square of sorts. However, it seemed to us that the place was just an artificial destination for tourists. Almost every building held a tee-shirt or other tourist shop, a restaurant, a "museum", or a hotel. We've been spoiled by our off-season, off-the-beaten-path destinations. Santillana reminded us that it was indeed time to stop travelling because the tourists are beginning to return. But, don't get me wrong, it's a nice place. Really.

The next day, we drove east, through Bilbao. It's a huge, industrial city with a single tourist attraction, the Guggenheim Museum. We convinced ourselves that we did not want to fight big city traffic to see the museum, nor did we want to loose time. We had a timeline after all, so we passed up our chance. Maybe next time.

We crossed up into France along the coast of the Bay of Biscay and then turned east again. No sooner had we passed through the first toll booth for the French toll road system than we were pulled over by three armed and intimidating Customs officers. Now, passing a Customs officer's grilling is always intimidating, but here it seemed more so.

The officer in charge asked for our car papers. The papers were buried deep in the front trunk so we had to half unpack to get to them. The officer looked carefully at the contents of the trunk. He also asked pretty standard questions like "Pasport please?", "Where have you been?", "When did you arrive in France?", and "Where do you live?" We gave simple, true answers, answers we had practiced since complicating a pre-flight quiz a couple of months ago. Of course our simple, true answers raised eyebrows (American passport, Finnish car papers, Ukrainian address, unable to accurately remember when we were where, etc.) but what the heck, it's the truth they were looking for and no one would make up our history.

The hardest question, presumably asked to check an identification number, was: "Can I see the engine?" I had to admit that I'd never seen the engine before and really had no idea how to get to it. We opened the back trunk to show that the engine wasn't there and, of course, the front was still open and in disarray. The French officer just shook his head. But finally, he told his fellow officers that we were Americans and our papers "seemed" in order. He wished us a pleasant journey and Marianne started the unseen engine and drove away.

For the next couple of hours, we were treated to a wonderful view of the Pyranees off to our right. We stopped at a roadside rest that featured a monument to the Tour De France bicycle race. I can't imagine trying to go up or down those mountains without a reliable engine, seen or unseen.

At the end of this long day, we stopped in the French town of Carcassonne. Our guidebook says the town is famous for an old town, surrounded by an elaborate double wall and moat but adds that, inside the wall, it is just another tourist village. Undaunted, we crossed the drawbridge and looked at postcards. The guidebook was right. Carcasonne looks more historic than it feels. However, on this late Monday afternoon in March, it was not crowded, so the almost-empty streets seemed almost-authentic. Even the new gargoyles on the required church seemed almost-authentic. Nice, but not the best walled town we've seen.

Oh well, it was a long day and we managed to see a lot of countryside so an arranged walled city was a fine ending.

Take care and practice your story for Customs officers.

John and Marianne

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