Dazed and confused in Zaragoza

We left the loving, calming surrounds of beatiful San Sebastian and yesterday afternoon our train lobbed into Zaragoza in the country´s central northern region. For the first time, language became a real issue. But that´s for later.

Let me bring you up to speed...

Our final day evening in SS was a calm night of walking through beautiful streets, basking in wonderful weather and good vibes aplenty. Bec and I stumbled on a game of Jai Alai in the backstreets - a crazy handball crossed with squash type game where people bang this solid-looking ball against a wall with their bare hands. During the day we´d also developed a love for the local sangria - a very simple blend of light red and citrus. We found a few different sunny spots and knocked over two whole jugs of it. We later met up with my dad and had a basic dinner of entrees (smoked salmon, jamon, asparagus and salad) which was possibly the meal of the trip so far for its simplicity and delicious representation of the region. We hit a few bars including a very cool wine bar and crashed.

Bec was up and about early and took a run along the stunning SS boardwalk while the sun was rising before we stumbled on an awesome little patisserie for breakfast. The train trip to Zaragoza was uneventful (aside from us disgracing the carriage with our messy lunch of baguettes, cheese and jamon) but we were welcomed to Zaragoza with something less than the famous Spanish hospitality we´d come to expect. When trying to buy our next leg of train trips (to Barcelona) I was mercilessly mocked for my lack of Spanish despite my attempt to conduct the majority of the conversation in my pathetic version of the beautiful tongue. Instead of help I got rolled eyes and exaggerated groans of disapproval, making it patently clear that my attempts at the world´s biggest language weren´t appreciated. On top of this, not only did we get stung with a massive fee for booking seats (the norm in Spain, apparently), the evil wench also ballsed the process up entirely and only gave us two seats rather than the required three, apparently having not seen that our rail pass clearly was for two people. An accident? I think not, my friends, I think not.

Anyhoo, we made it to our hotel with some relief (despite only then discovering the balls up) and we took a constitutional around what is a very historic city. However we were walking during siesta and we were thinking the place was a bit of a dud. That all changed when, after a few 40c beers in our hotel, we went out to find a restaurant and ran into the usual problem of too much choice. We had a beer at Cerveciria D´Jorge (George´s Pub, basically) and at a few other places while waiting for more restaurant options to open up. Sadly this only complicated matters and we ended up with a near stalemate over where to eat which ended when I just piled into the first place that looked half decent. For better or worse it was an all you can eat tapas type bar with Charlies´Bistro style Spanish food. It was bearable though. After dinner we drank at a number of very cool bars including one with this great beer garden surrounded by ancient towering walls. Republica also had a lot of antique type stuff in it and that was cool too.

This morning we were off to a very slow start and have succeeded only really in walking to the train station to fix the ticket debacle (we found someone who could speak English) and drinking beer. We found this great little place off behind the main plaza which was loaded with locals in their siesta break and had a beer and some fried anchovies which, frankly, were the bomb. Tonight we´re going out for a decent sit-down dinner and hopefully find a pub we walked past last night called Mombassa. It had a giant rhino in it. I liked it but we didn´t stay. I don´t like our chances of finding it though, this place is a bit of a warren in some ways.