About our Road trip though Basque country

So today is a sad day... we must leave Donostia (San Sebastian) and I have to start heading home. We take a train in a few hours to Paris where we will be until I take a plane back to Columbus and Justin continues onto Prague on Sunday.

So much has happened since I last wrote in. The biggest pieces of news are from Tuesday and Wendesday. On Tuesday, we rented a car and drove from Donostia to Pamplona (Iruña) to Valcarlos to Osses to Biddary to Biaritz back down the coast to San Sebastian. We were dissapointed when we headed out that we had not heard from Jean Iroz (Grandpa Hank´s 1st cousin) yet, but decided we would go drive through anyways. The drive is beautiful. First of all, I must remind you that the Basque coast is very green and gets lots of rain, but within an hour you are in Pamplona which looks a lot like the dessert just north of St. George!!! In between, you go through multiple mountain passes where you can look down and see cute little Basque towns.

Once we were on the road that would take us through the Pyrenees from Pamplona to Valcarlos, we stopped for lunch at a truck stop. Europe is soo great... only in europe can you stop at a truck stop, during siesta (so the dinning room is closed) and get a 3 course meal... salad, chicken with potatoes, and flan for desert! Then off we went.

On the road from Pamplona to Valcarlos, you quickly start to asscend to one of the 3 main passes in the Basque Pyranees.... on the way, not much more than 20 minutes north of Pamplona there is a little town name Irotz or Iroz. Of course, I got out and took a picture.

Then you really start climbing fast.... very curvy roads and it starts to get greener with more trees... it looks like the mountain cayons on the west coast. You go through several neat little Basque towns... everything is so clean and pretty and picturesque with the houses all lined up on the road. Finally, you reach a peak where you can take pictures into the valleys on either side. At that point, you are really close to Valcarlos which is the next town... I think if you dared to step off the cliff, you would roll down 1,500-2000 feet and be there!

Valcarlos is beatitful! Its situated on the side of a very steep caynon, although some of the houses are on the other side of the canyon. Very cosy, very green (think cottowood caynon in the summer). There are farms on these steep hills and of course sheep as well. We stopped and took a picture of the church where presumably Atutxi Juan was christened, etc. It wasn´t open, so we couldn´t look inside. We looked for the cemetary, but couldn´t find it... maybe it was too steep to put it in the church yards??? Marijeanne will have to help us figure that out. We bought a few postcards, etc and went on our way. (We were disappointed to not find the house (etxa), but it turns out that it is no longer there anyways... you´ll have to read on to figure out how we figured that out!).

On we went. In less than a mile you are in France.... its kind of funny, I always knew that our family lived very close to the border, but I don´t think that I realized how close! It makes sense why even the Iroz´s still in Europe live now in France... Access to France is much easier from Valcarlos than to Spain.

On to Osses where Amutxi Aurelie was born. Its only about 30 minutes away. It is in more of the foothills of the Pyrenees... big rolling green hills... still very pretty. We found that church, also locked. But the cemmatary is around the Osses church, so we looked around, but didn´t find anything too interesting. We bought some fruit and french cookies (and kind of struggled to use our basic french knowledge to say please, thank you, etc.... its weird to be in a place that goes back and forth between spanish and french soo much with a lot of the people having Basque as their first language).

Then, we were onto Biddary where the Etchemendys (roughly translates to Mountain House) were from which is maybe 20 minutes from Osses. Biddary is a little more difficult to find than Valcarlos (the main road goes through there!) or Osses (which is slightly off the main road, but fairly well marked with road signs). You have to wind back up the foothills and all of a sudden you are on a plateu where the town is! There, we found the church (which had a sign that it could no longer be left open all the time due to graffiti... how sad) and starting looking at the cemetary around it. We were looking around when Justin´s phone rang... who was on the line??? Well, you´ll have to wait until the next installment because I don´t have time to finish.... need to go get lunch and make our train!