You can drive from Bilbao to Bayonne in less than two hours, but we took a scenic route, along the coast. Unfortunately, it was a rainy day and we saw mostly fog, and mostly heard the thwap-thwap-thwap of windshield wipers.
The rain stopped about the time that we got to Guernica. Guernica is a lovely and prosperous town. It is especially busy on Monday, which for generations has been “Market Day.” A popular saying there is “lunes gerniqués, golperik ez.” This means “not a trace of work gets done on Mondays.” It’s when people come to Guernica to buy produce, eat at restaurants, and generally have a good time.
Historically, Guernica was an early adopter of democratic institutions. This love of freedom lead the Basque people to oppose Francisco Franco, who in 1936 initiated a military takeover. In April 1937 Franco had his Nazi and Fascist allies, Germany and Italy, bomb Guernica on a Monday, apparently to ensure maximum civilian casualties.
Pablo Picasso, who had been living in France, promptly created the Cubist painting, Guernica, and exhibited it at the 1937 Paris World’s Fair. The black-and-white painting became an international sensation for its surreal denunciation of war.
Guernica was loaned to New York’s Museum of Modern Art until Franco’s death. It presently resides at Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid.
I mention this history because the City of Guernica exhibits a copy outside, in a park. We drove by the park, but did not get out of the car. We had too far to go, and there was too little parking; and, besides, our drive-by view was a huge disappointment.
The art is depicted on a tiled wall. The image already is bizarre, as any Cubist painting must be, and breaking the image into a series of squares absolutely ruins Picasso’s masterpiece. That said, you should take my opinion with a grain of salt. I can’t tell the difference between Cubist masterpieces and the drawings of a ten-year-old on LSD. Nonetheless, I somehow managed to be disappointed by the desecration of a painting I do not like.
Guernica is, however, a beautiful little city. Some day I hope to return on a Monday, which remains Market Day.
I digress. We were driving through Basque Country, on our way to Bayonne.
There are a lot of trees in Basque Country. Indeed, over half of Basque Country is forested. One sees lumber trucks on the road. This may not interest folks from Washington State or Michigan, but in Alicante it’s hard to find enough wood to build a birdhouse. For us, seeing a fully loaded lumber truck is like spying Big Foot strapped across a hunter’s hood.
There are no checkpoints at the Spanish/French border. I attribute this to the fact that they both are part of the European Union. However, Ireland also is part of the EU; and yet, people flying from France to Dublin must go through passport control and explain why they have come to Ireland. I attribute this to Ireland’s desire to limit the importation of smugness, which the EU treaty does not address.
Once again, I digress. We were about to enter Bayonne. We have a reservation at Hotel des Arceaux. This was confirmed by an email, a portion of which is pasted below:
We were warned. They told us right upfront that when we stayed at Hotel des Arceaux, we would pay!
Of course Booking.com was referring only to the $106 room rate. But the real price of admission was not the rent; it was these stairs:
Naturally our room was on the top (fifth) floor.
Am I complaining too much? I think not. If all you wanted was a recitation of how all the people are nice, and the food is amazing, and the scenery takes your breath away, you would watch a Rick Steves video. Conflict is central to all classic travel tales, like The Odyssey, or Don Quixote, or Thelma and Louise.
Again, I digress. We have left bags in our fifth floor walkup, and are exploring Bayonne. Bayonne is great. The people are nice, the food is amazing, and the scenery takes your breath away. Ha Ha! I just said that to be ironic. However, the people were nice enough, the food was okay, and the scenery was lovely; but what really got our attention, what made us want to return to Bayonne, was the street music.
We left Bayonne without incident. The commercial parking lot did not gouge us. The absence of a parking lot price gouge may seem like an odd observation, but you will understand its importance when I tell you about Bordeaux. First, however, I will introduce you to Jim Gaffigan: