Day 8 & 9: Bilbao to Pobena to Castro Urdiales

 The pics

Day 8 Bilbao to Pobena

After a great day in Balboa and a great evening meal of pulpo (squid), I decided to walk out of the city along the river which actually was kind of a bad choice as it was mainly industrial on the other side and pretty close to a road on the side I was walking. But it was a flat walk which was a welcome break and after the next city there were Hills that went up and overlooked the ocean. The first city I came to was portugaleta and this was kind of cool they had this most interesting fairy that was actually suspended from a bridge above that carried people and cars across the river.

Pobena is a lovely small City on the ocean and for the size of the town we had a hole Plaza full of bars and cafes and restaurants the one I ate at you probably would not pick cuz it didn't look very nice from the street but it had a wonderful menu of the day that was discounted slightly for

pilgrims. The food here is amazing and for$12 I got a beautiful goat cheese and walnut salad followed by grilled bass and vegetables and included wine bread and dessert it's unbelievable the cost in the quality of food here a great place to take a vacation I highly

recommend it even if you don't want to be a pilgrim you could take some of the hikes and stay in places that are incredibly cheap. I mentioned that I had a room in the city in a beautiful apartment to myself for only $50 and at this time of year especially it's easy to find rooms and pensions for right around that rate of course you can find much more expensive ones.

Day 9 Pobena to Castro Urdiales

And you today was going to be a shorter day with only about 12 miles of walking so I plan to sleep late but everyone in the Alberta last night was up early and even though I woke for a few hours in the middle of the night I decided to get up and go ahead and walk.

I met a lovely German woman from Frankfurt last night at dinner and this morning we both were leaving a little bit late and found the only open bar in the town to have a early morning coffee and snack before we hit

the road. So we walked together today and it was a pleasant day with mostly nice walking few Hills not a lot of climbing especially as there were two cool,  literally, tunnels through mountains for pedestrians only,  as well as great views of the ocean and Best Yet a bar about every 3 Mi which gave us a refresher coffee or a beer and a snack.

Last night when I was looking for accommodations for today I came across a private room overlooking the ocean for $42 and had booked it and was telling her about it so when we got to this town we sat on the ocean and had some

drinks and some snacks and she decided to look and she's staying here too so I'm looking forward to another good seafood dinner and another good hike tomorrow which should be a bit further. 

The room is quite lovely and

overlooking the ocean and interestingly again as I've commented before how often I've seen cows and farmland on ocean front property between this condominium type or townhouse row in the ocean is actually a cemetery that's obviously hundreds if not a thousand years old. It's really makes me curious about the difference in the US that all of this becomes private land and only available to the very rich even if family is owned they can't afford the taxes of the value but it's being given. I wonder if something about the thousands of years of History here and tradition make that harder to happen here.