We gave spain a couple of days cycling before deciding to get the hell outta there. It was very hard to get motivated in the morning knowing we either had to cycle on a major road or push our bikes up a mountain. So we made the decision to put our bikes on the train and head back to the French border. So two days cycling into spain, and one hour out again on the train.
23st June – Day 51
Our third day in Spain we continued over the mountains.
The only other alternative was a very busy road. See photo below.
We stopped in a town seaside town called Garautz. The camping ground was shut so we stayed in a hotel. We went into town for some tapas – or Pinchos as they call it in the Basque country.
They don’t seem to have restaurants like we are used to. The only restaurants we could find were in the back of the bar area, with a seating area, bright lights and usually a TV going. Zero ambience! They also didn’t open until around 9pm.
The food was really cheap though. We found a place that did a 3 course menu including wine for 14 euros. We couldn’t be bothered with our phrase book so we just picked our dishes at random for a bit of fun to see what we would end up with.
Mike ended up with a whitebait omelet for starters and steak for main (he cheated a bit as it was obvious Entrecut was going to be steak. I ended up with prawns for starters and a bowl of squid for my main. The squid was really nice but nowhere near a filling meal so I swapped for Mikes steak (serves him right for cheating!).
We decided the food is nowhere near as good as in France, and the people seem to a bit grumpy as well, so that and the crappy roads made our decision to backtrack to France an easy one.