Another day, another country.

After a two-shower morning doing the final cleaning and laundry - and I could have done with a third - we have shut up Château Smith for a month or so.  We dropped our lovely guests at the airport in Toulouse and had lunch there with them in the restaurant that looks out across the field to the A330 bit of the Airbus works.  A Singapore Airlines A330, all in the green except for the tail fin, obligingly took off for our entertainment, followed soon afterwards by one of the works A380s.  Both, being light, took off with incredibly short runs.

Fond farewells later, we headed out for the motorway, arriving in Bilbao after a somewhat sportif drive along the motorways of the Spanish Basque country.  Fabulous scenery, for those whose knuckles were not whitely gripping the wheel.  Dotty navigated us successfully to our destination, but it was useful to have rehearsed the later stages beforehand on Google Earth, since her Spanish accent is almost as toe-curling as her French one.

First impressions of our new digs could scarcely have been worse.  We drove into the underground car park, and made our way up to reception, to be greeted by a bolshy young receptionist who gave me a ticking off for driving into the car park without first reporting to him.  A German family ahead of us evidently got a similar treatment.  Well, the flat seems all right, though very hot and lacking air conditioning.  We took a stroll into town this evening and had a glass each of excellent wine at a bar in the Casco Viejo, but weren't impressed by the menu, nor by the pintxos/tapas in any of the bars we looked at.  Perhaps we were just too tired and scratchy to be adventurous.  Home made tortilla back at the flat, made with some of the contents of the leftovers cool bag - one of the benefits of renting self-catering accommodation. 

The situation of the bits of town we've seen is superb - built on a narrow, winding river valley, with tall blocks on either side, decorated with fine ironwork.  The Casco Viejo is a little bit daunting, with tall buildings to either side of narrow streets, sometimes with washing hanging between them à la Napolitaine.  We'll explore further tomorrow, armed with our Bilbao Cards, which should give us unlimited travel on the buses, trams and metro.