Bilbao and San Sebastian

To celebrate 30th birthdays we travelled to Bilbao and San Sebastian.  MacKenzie, Richard and I stayed in Bilbao the first night, then met Holly, Jeff and Jesse for the remainder of the week in San Sebastian.  We stayed in a great apartment a few minutes from the beach and had fun practicing our Spanish skills.

The highlight of Bilbao was visiting the Guggenheim museum.  In San Sebastian we hiked Mt. Urgull, drank sangria during sunset, visited a neighboring small fishing village called Hondarribia, and ate pintxos most nights.  San Sebastian is known for it's good food and night life, so most nights we would go "pintxos-hopping", eating small plates of food at four to six different bars where food is eaten by patrons at narrow bars while standing up.  Pintxos is the Basque version of tapas, which are often drank with small glasses of txakoli, Rioja wine or beer.  Txakoli is a regionally produced very dry white wine that's poured from high to make it slightly bubbly.  Our most common sentence we said in Spanish was most likely, "Seis txakoli, por favor!"

The other big highlight of the trip was when Jeff proposed to Holly on the beach during sunset.  It was such a great surprise and so special to witness.  Congrats Holly and Jeff!

Cathedral in Bilbao

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Our first pintxos and txakoli in Bilbao

Mack and Richard drinking Rioja outside of one of the pintxos bars

Jeff Koons "Tulips" at the Guggenheim in Bilbao

Jeff Koons "Puppy" made of flowers and soil

Guggenheim designed by Frank Gehry

Mack and Richard enjoying coffee and pintxos for lunch

The beach in San Sebastian with Mt. Urgull in the background

Spanish style lunch in our apartment

view from Mt. Urgull

Celebrating Mack's 30th birthday with sangria

On Playa de la Concha at sunset

Typical Basque lunch in Hondarribia.  For this lunch we had sangria, fried anchovies,
tortilla de bacalao, grilled shrimp, clams, squid in their ink and albondigas.

In the medieval walled section of Hondarribia

She says "YES!"

On the beach in San Sebastian

Going for a swim

Holiday Trip Part 3: Rovereto, Italy

We had planned to go to Zurich after Freiburg, but friends Marius and Paolo invited us to come to Rovereto and we gladly changed our plans to see them and meet little Charlie.  Rovereto is on the southern edge of the Italian Alps.  Because it's close to Austria and Germany, this region has a little bit of German influence in the food, language, and culture.  A lot of people speak both Italian and German, and the food is Italian with a little bit of German influence (think Italian food plus cabbage, bacon and apple strudel).

Our first day in Rovereto we drove to a tiny town in the hills for lunch at the mother's house of one of Paola's friends, and were treated to one of the best meals I've ever had, all homemade (including the wine and limoncello) and some of it collected from the woods (spinach, mushrooms).  For the first course we had barley and vegetable soup and for the second course spaetzle with wild spinach, cheese and speck.  The main course was vitello tonnato (veal with tuna and caper sauce), sauteed wild mushrooms and cabbage salad (with homemade red wine vinegar).  For dessert we had semifreddo, apple strudel and panna cotta, with limoncello to drink and espresso to finish things off.  Afterwards we had a tour of the local apple factory, and hiked to a beautiful old church on a hill.

The next day we went to Riva del Garda on Garda Lake.  We had a great meal and took a stroll around the lake.  The final day we did a little shopping in Rovereto, visited the Museum of Modern Art, went for a hike and wine tasted at a local restaurant.  The last night we overlapped with Joost and Karen, friends from Nashville, who also came to visit Marius and Paola.

The main attraction of the trip, of course, was Charlie.  Always happy and smiley!

Italian mama and daughter preparing lunch

Hike to the church

San Remedio (??)

at the precipice

Melinda apple factory tour

The apples are sorted automatically by size, shape and color using special cameras.  Very exciting.

Charlie

Where Mozart used to stay while visiting Rovereto

Rovereto valley

Wine tasting

Charlie can stand on his own!

Garda Lake

lunch in Riva del Garda

Joost and Karen

Holiday Trip Part 2: Freiburg

After Nieder-Olm we took the train to Freiburg to stay a week with Richard's parents.  We had a lot of fun walking around Freiburg, eating Richard's mom's great German food, and seeing sister Sophie and some of Richard's high school friends.  We visited the Christmas markets everyday for our fill of Gluehwein, and Richard finally had his fix of proper German sausages.

We celebrated with a typical German Christmas eve meal of beet soup with pierogi, carp, dumplings, sauerkraut and poppyseed cake.  For Christmas dinner we had Sauerbraten (beef roast marinated in vinegar), Rouladen (beef rolls filled with bacon, pickles and mustard), turkey stuffed with chestnuts, dumplings, sauerkraut and sand cake.  All of our meals were tasty, served in copious amounts and always followed up with the comment, "but you haven't eaten very much yet" regardless of how much you've eaten.

finally

Gluehwein at the Freiburg Christmas market

View of Freiburg from the Schlossberg

Albert and Richard

Sofie, Richard, Tony and Albert

Richard, Mops and Sofie drinking Gluehwein

Dampfnudel and sauerkraut at the Christmas market

Fondue and schnapps

Richard and Sofie

Christmas eve dinner: Richard, Kelsey, Kasimir, Sofie and Mops

Evening view from the Piech house

Waldsee

Waiting for the train on our way to Italy