To see Portugal and Spain, and to do so
in a convenient and cost-effective way, we rented a car. It is
difficult to make trains and buses always work on schedule and for
four people, that can get rather pricey. (Though, the number of toll
roads in Portugal adds up the price too.)
We rented the car in Seville, Spain.
And car rental in Spain is very reasonable. Even if you plan to
return it in another city. With one big caveat. That city has to be
in Spain.
If you return the car in a city in
another country, there is an addition of $1000 or more to the price.
That was a problem. We needed to get, by a certain date, to Cahors,
France.
So we solved our problem like this:
After we left Burgos, Spain, (having already spent time in Portugal)
we drove to San Sebastian, Spain. We didn't get to much sightseeing
in San Sebastian, but what we did see was lovely. There is a river
flowing into the Atlantic Ocean here. Across the river are highly
decorated bridges. Plus, this is in the foothills of the Pyrenees
Mountains, so there is a lot of up and down coming into and
throughout San Sebastian.
Alrica dropped the kids and me off at
the Estacion de Autobuses and she drove the car to where it had to be
returned. Then she took a taxi back. Meanwhile, I bought bus tickets
to Biarritz, France. This way we were returning the car still in a
city in Spain.
We rode the bus over the border,
through the mountains. Sometimes you could see the Atlantic, other
times you could not.
When we arrived in Biarritz, we rented
another car there. We also spent the night in a studio apartment
there. It was very nice. It was on the fifth floor which in America
we would call the sixth floor. In Europe, and much of the rest of the
world, the ground level floor is called the ground floor or the
zeroth floor. Then the first floor is the one above that. And so on.
So the studio was on the fifth floor
and the building's elevator, which was tiny, only went to the fourth
floor. So if you wanted to ride the elevator, you could, but then you
still went up one more set of stairs.
The apartment was a model of
efficiency, able to have a kitchen, bathroom, and main room where one
could sleep four in a minimal area.
Biarritz itself is an adorable town.
Sadly, the weather was in a foul mood, with cold spitting rain
falling on us most of our time there. Biarritz is right on the
Atlantic Ocean, and the seas were foamy and violent while we were
there. You could see a huge pile of sand that had been built to
protect some of the businesses right along the beach from the ocean,
which must have been higher than usual at high tide. We saw it at a
lower tide, and the buildings were safe. But the ocean was sure
pounding the beach.
The streets are narrow and bend in
strange ways. There are very few straight streets of any sort. But
I'm sure they were built long before the invention of the car. As
such, one-way streets are common. Some are wide enough to allow
street parking, but seeing cars taking up much of the sidewalk was
not uncommon.
The next day, we drove from Biarritz to
Cahors. This was a beautiful drive through the countryside. Of
course, near the border, we were still going through mountains. In
both Spain and France, there are a lot of tunnels you traverse. Some
are short, less than 200 meters. Others are long, nearly 5 km. Along
the tops of most of them are smoothly carved and cemented arches. But
along a couple, the smooth arch is only near the entrance and the
exit, and the remainder of the ceiling above looks like it was a
natural cave with the random bends and dips of rock above.
France does not like to waste a single
Euro on unnecessary speed limit signs. You only see a speed limit
sign when a) it is necessary because you are entering a dangerous
curve or something like that and they want to limit your speed or b)
you are about to enter a speed trap where they have a radar gun aimed
at the car and take a picture of the license plate if you are
speeding. Apparently the law says that they can't have one of these
speed traps without having a sign up telling you there is a speed
trap and what the proper speed limit is. Thus, even in France, where
spending on speed limit signs is anathema, they do it anyway.
When you enter a zone where there is a
posted speed limit, you see a circular white sign with a number in
black, maybe 70. (Remember, this is in kilometers per hour, not miles
per hour.) And when you leave that zone, you see a circular white
sign with that same number in black, but now there is a slash through
it. So even when you leave a speed zone, they don't tell you what the
new speed is. They just tell you that it is no longer the old speed.
So how do you know how fast you are
allowed to go in France? Well, apparently you just have to know these
rules: On the motorways (these are the controlled access toll roads)
you can go 110 kph. On the other highways you can go 90 kph as long
as you are outside of a village or town or city. If you are in a
village, town, or city, you can only go 50 kph.
So you are driving along a highway and
then you see a white rectangular sign with rounded corners that says
the name of a village. This means you have entered the village and
you must slow down to 50 kph. You see a few buildings, a place where
very few people live. And still you might see a church building that
is 1000 years old or older. There are so many medieval structures
still standing in provincial France. It's amazing.
A kilometer or two later you see
another white rectangular sign with rounded corners that again says
the name of the village you were just in, but this time with a slash
through it. This means you have left the village and you can again
travel at 90 kph.
So, after a long journey, we made it to
Cahors, France. Here we returned the car we had rented in Biarritz,
France (again in the same country we got it from so as to avoid the
exorbitant charge.)
I don't know how many of you will ever
be driving in the French provinces. If you do, there is so much to
see and it is gorgeous and impressive. But consider yourself warned!
