Favourite Cities & Hotels In Spain Post 1 Summary of my Spanish trip, Santander and Bilbao, and Hiking at Parador Fuent De

We landed on French Brittany Ferry at super Santander.

SANTANDER CITY

Santander clifftop drive, jogging path and cycle track. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

I loved Santander's hilltop drive. The nearest UK seaside city I could compare it to would be Bournemouth. Elegant. Little sailing boats, as well as big ships in the port. Walks down by the sea or up on the cliff. Running and cycling alongside the trees along the clifftop. 

We drove downhill to the huge palatial Casino and stopped for breakfast in the grand hotel opposite.

The Cathedral was tiny, at the back of an uphill square. But we found a reasonably priced underground car park sandwiched between the cathedral and the modern museum of art.

The cathedral was tiny.   

Hotels in Spain

Post 1

Santander, the sweet Seaside city of Santander

Santander Hotel

Grande Hotel is on the seafront. Right where the action is.

BILBAO

Bilbao: Big, Busy and Bustling

Hotel Bilder boutique hotel. Bilder means picture. It has some pictures of old times.  The ground floor restaurant, door beside reception serves Tapas in the evening and full meals at the restaurant at the back where you have breakfast. 

The car park is a short drive away. You are lucky if you get a parking spot nearby to unload or load.

What's good? Location, location. 

We walked across the bridge to the railway station known for its indoor stained glass mural.

We stopped at two wine shops to stock up on Spanish wine which is cheaper and in some cases not by exported to the UK. Ruiz, a family business, has a collection of mugs, like toby jugs in British pubs, around the top shelf.

A larger wine shop, El Rincon del Vino, has a tasting room at the back but apparently nothing happening for the public until September.

Next day we drove out via the Guggenheim museum, an awkward looking building. Love it or hate it. Some people loved the building but were not keen on the artwork inside. I was the reverse. We stayed at a hotel opposite on my last visit. 

My impression of Bilbao. Big, busy, bustling. Crowded. 

Hotel Bilder Boutique

Least Liked

At first I didn't like the black tiny lobby. 

Best, Most Liked

But the adjacent restaurant for dinner and breakfast was convenient. The location was fabulous. 

Parking Tip

Parking in a nearby car park, mean first unloading and later loading up suitcases on leaving on the bay outside. However, the police made us move from what we later realised was a spot for the handicapped, to another slightly further spot which became free.

PARADOR FUENT DE

The paradors were founded decades ago to restore or renovate old, historic buildings and encourage tourism to the regions. Hotels have antique furniture and regional food. 

Parador Fuente De in the Picos de Europa

Expect a long winding drive, with road works. Soaring peaks.

The parador is the end of the drive, beside the cable car to the rocky hilltop.

Least Favourite 

Queue for cable car tickets. Cable car cancelled in bad weather - sudden mist.

Most Liked, Loved

Almond tart/cake for breakfast.

Good shop beside the cable car where I bought a rucksack. Upper floor lounge with a view.

Cows with a cowbell in the slope behind.

Best - most favourite parts of this hotel stay.

Balcony with two chairs. Bidet. Fridge. Cows with a bell.

*************

We spend another four days seeing Porto in Portugal and the wine museums.

Hotels in Portugal (Post 2)

Wow Museum, Gaia on the southern side of Porto, the left bank. Hillside museums. Hilltop view. If elderly, look for the indoor lift.

Douro Museum.

Ski Centres and Sights in Andorra, near Spain and France

Map of Andorra, sandwiched between Spain to the South and France to the North.

You can take a one day guided tour to Andorra from Barcelona, or drive there for a longer stay. My family drove all the way from near Gibraltar in the far south of Spain in December 2021 in order to go skiing.

As you can see, it is quite small. The capital and largest city is Andorra La Vella, slightly nearer Spain in the south by road. En route you pass Sant Julia de Loria, and Santa Coloma, on the CG-1 road, which runs along the river.

Continuing on north to the east on the CG-2 road, you pass les Bons Encamp, Canillo, Soldeu and Pas de la Case.

Flag of Andorra. Blue, yellow and red. With a lozenge in the middle containing stripes and two animals.

Compare with the flags of Spain and France. Spain also has a motif in the middle. The French flag is red, white and blue.

Flag of France.

Flag of Spain.

Flag of Portugal.

Flag of Catalonia, Spain.

Now let's take a quick look at each place.

1 Santa Julia (accent on the a) de Loria

On the Valera river.

Sant Julià de Lòria

Museum of Tobacco

L'església de Sant Ivo d'Auvinyà ha estat beneïda per l'Arquebisbe d'Urgell i Copríncep d'Andorra Mons. Joan Enric Vives i Sicília el 10 de desembre de 2011

Fer55 - Own work

Andorrako Auvinyà herriko etxe sorta bat

Koldo Biguri - Own work

Tobotronc

Amusement park cum nature trail. Longest ride in the world.

Gran Valira, the largest river in Andorra, flowing through Sant Julià de Lòria in the south.

2 Santa Coloma

Just south of the capital is Santa Coloma.

Notice how high the mountains are above the city.

From Santa Coloma you are only about 2 kilometres from the major city.

3 Andorra La Vella

The capital and largest city.

Sites include

La Casa de la Val

Historic old house and government building.

See 1 monuments in the garden, sculptures and a tower dovecote, the Criminal Court with carved wood panel walls and carved ceiling, the wooden doors of the cupboard of the seven keys, the modern auditorium upstairs.

River Gran Valira flowing under the triangular Pont de Paris in the capital of Andorra, Andorra la Vella.

Skiing

Ski resorts

Most of these resorts were once small mountain villages which have grown due to skiing. The resorts have joined together so that your ski pass covers neighbouring areas. As a result there are now two large alpine skiing areas known as Vallnord and Grandvalira.

Vallnord covers Arcalis and the Arinsal-Pal ski area. Arcalis is quite distant away from Arinsal-Pal but the latter have been joined up by a cable car connecting the two ski areas. The Arisnal-Pal ski area is directly accessible from La Massana right from the middle of the town. 93 km (58 mi) of trails.

Grandvalira covers Soldeu and Pas de la Casa. 

The Soldeu ski area is also accessible from Encamp and Canillo. It has 193 km of ski slopes between 1710–2640 m. The surface of grandvalira is about 1.926 H, and it's divided into 6 different areas:

• Pas de la Casa — skiing resort right on the French border, north east of the capital.
• 
  
  
  Pas de la Case ski resort on the French border in the north of Andorra. Notice the white snow on the left. The buildings are colourful, black, brown, white, orange, yellow, pink, green and blue, beige. The green hotel on the front, far right, is the Hotel Kandahar.

• Soldeu—skiing resort
• Arcalis—ski area at the head of the valley from El Serrat
• Arinsal—skiing resort part of the Arinsal Pal ski area. Also known as Vallnord which means Valley North in English
• Pal—skiing resort part of the Arinsal Pal ski area.

• I eventually found a photo of the Storm in a Teacup sculpture on the website of a UK travel company called Absolutely Travel Company.
• 
  
• Arinsal-Pal -- which is two skiing areas connected by cable car. See Arinsal and Pal. North, slightly north west of the capital city.

Church of St Climent de Pal. 11the century building with later 16th century murals.

Arinsal cable car and looking down at cable car station below.

La Rabassa is a cross-country (Nordic) skiing area in southern Andorra above the town of Sant Julia de Loria.

Websites

Historic House and government building

http://www.casadelavall.ad/en/the-consell-general

Postal Museum

https://visitandorra.com/en/culture/postal-museum/

Museum Pass

https://visitandorra.com/ca/cultura/passmuseu-d-andorra/

Holidays booked from the UK and website showing the teacup sculpture

https://www.absolutelytravel.co.uk/andorra/mountain-walks-coll-de-la-botella.aspx

More to see in Ordino, in my later post.

 About the Author Angela Lansbury

BIOGRAPHY

Angela Lansbury B A Hons ACG ALB PM5 EH5 DL5 VC5 
The Author of several books including  Etiquette For Every Occasion. Wedding Speeches & Toasts. How to be the Best Man. Quick Quotations. Who Said What When.

Blogs travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com

translateforfun.blogspot.com

Braddell Heights Advanced Toastmasters Speakers Club Vice President Public Relations (VPPR), Previous President

Join BHA 1st Wednesday 7pm and 3rd Saturday 2 pm Singapore time 

Vice President Public Relations (VP PR) of Tampines Changkat Advanced;

Secretary of weekly online Singapore International Dynamic Toastmasters Speakers’ Club;

Member and past president of Harrovians toastmasters club, UK; Past member of HOD Toastmasters, London. Past member in Singapore of: Toastmasters Club of Singapore (TCS); Tiarel; and Senja Cashew.

More details from Toastmasters International find a club.

Regular attendee at annual Swanwick Writers’ School, England.

Regular attendee at annual Writers’ Holiday, Wales.

Contributor to poetry readings, and after tea courses on: Speaking On Radio To Promote Books; and Plots And Character.

Winner of many club and area speaking contests in the UK and Singapore.

Language advisor to Empire Toastmasters club in Indonesia.

Language and speech workshops in Singapore.

Speaker on radio and TV in England, Scotland, the USA, and Australia.

Compiler of a school course on public speaking for teachers to prepare pupils for school open days with attending ceremonies before government ministers, Singapore.

Former member of Harrow Writers’ Circle, London, and two writing groups in Singapore.

Angela is on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter. She would be delighted to link up with new friends.

 Please share links to your favourite posts.

Books by Angela Lansbury
How to be the best man. (Ward Lock / Cassell.)
Wedding Speeches and Toasts.(Ward Lock / Cassell.)
Unforgettable British Weekends.
Poetry Workshop Workbook.
The Tailor and the Spy. (Lulu.)
Larry The Talking Labrador. (Lulu.)
Writing Poetry for fun.

Quick Quotations

Who Said What When

 

Wonderful Views, and Worries, In Cable Cars in Romania, France, India and the World, Do You Love Them Or Fear Them?

Problems
Romania has a cable car at Busteni offering fine views in summer and France has a cable car at Chamonix offering spectacular views of spring snow. However, I and many others others don't like cable cars. If you don't like them, don't pay money to take them. Simple. But we can't resist the desire to take photo and the pressure of families and friends. Are they a hundred per cent safe, a hundred per cent dangerous?

Answer
Not a hundred percent safe. Not a hundred percent dangerous.

Story
Last week, June 2017, I took a cable car from B u s t e n i in Romania. (Spaces inserted because automatic spell checker changes words.) I should have been inoculated against cable car fear by my family ski trips to Chamonix, in France, three years running, taking the cable car.

French Cable Car At Chamonix
My family on the Romanian trip nonchalantly discussed the cable car in the ski resort of Chamonix, France, up the Aiguille du Midi (translated literally from the French it means Needle of the Mid/middle-point). I remembered France - as we went higher and higher, steeper and steeper, from the solid ground through the fir trees to the white snow to the icy precipices, I remember the French saying, "Ooh la-la!"

In France, at the top, I could have continued. But watching the skiing and climbing groups roped together, taking the icy path along a ridge with a sheer drop on one side, made me feel that the better option for me was braving the cable car descent back down to Chamonix.

Chamonix Museum
While others went skiing, I preferred to spend my day in Chamonix's museum, showing the early adventures of skiers. Intrepid ladies wearing Victorian style bonnets, leather boots and ankle length skirts set off across the snow, uphill, and downhill. Some postcards in the souvenir and newsagent shops show the same scenes.

Romanian Cable Car Options
In Romania at the resort village of Basteni, while you wait for your car to come down to the base point where you board, you look up. The counterbalancing green cable car is far out of sight.

The red pylons seem to rise for miles.  I felt decidedly nervous on the upward cable car 'flight'.

I hung back and let the keen climbers take the first car. Then you are first onto the next car.

If you are first on, you have a choice of places to stand. Once inside the cable car, no seats. Which way should you stand?

Best photos will be taken looking back downhill, surely? But seeing the ground retreat is more scary. Seeing the landing point approaching is better.

Fear of Flying
As we took off, I was surprised how scared and queasy I felt. I have been on the cable car in Singapore. Long ago I had conquered my fear of flying in planes from the UK to the USA or Singapore and on to Australia and New Zealand.

Think of a cable car like seats on a plane. I used to be afraid of flying - some years ago. Sitting in the window seat to take photos, I would look at the ground falling away on take off. That was the worst time. Further and further away from the ground and safety. Hours of butterflies in your tummy, every time the eggshell in which you travelled lurched or blew one way and then the other.

Noise on Planes
In a plane, as you climbed higher, you were subjected to at least two lots of very alarming crunching noise. On a plane the noise is from the wheels beings lifted up after take off. Later, as you descend to the airport, the noise is the wheels being let down ready to land.

For years when I heard that unnerving grating noise on a plane I imagined that a large suitcase was tumbling in the hold, smashing the fragile plane walls, or a small vehicle in the hold was detached from its moorings. Or maybe the wing had grown loose and a flap was flapping. I got in a flap. Then somebody explained to me the cause of the noise. Just the wheels kept out of the way so the plane was streamlined.

Landing in a plane was much better. Every second brought you nearer to the ground and safety, the end of your ordeal.

I found the same attitudes applied to riding in a cable car. It has similarities to fear of flying,. Like being on a  Big Dipper. (Big Dipper is probably a brand name, British for what the Americans call a rollercoaster - I once looked it up in Wikipedia.)

Noise on Cable Car
In the cable car you stand lurching around as the the cable car bounces noisily over the link to each pylon. The tree tops are just below. Then you see the top of the peak, and think, "Hurray - I and we have reached the end of this cable car journey."

But the return trip is still necessary, unless you wish to spend an hour or  more, in my case much more, descending a series of vertical peaks with neither harness, climbing shoes, experience nor maps, and think that requires less courage than standing still in a cable car for five to ten minutes.

You know your fear is illogical. After all, planes fly much higher. But on a plane you have a pilot and crew with you. In a cable car you have food and toilets if stranded. In a cable car you are alone.

At The Top  - Toilet
At Busteni in Romania, the top of the cable car exit area was a door with a sign saying it was a toilet. TOALET. That's handy before walking out onto the bare mountain with no trees to hide behind for a quick pee or wee. Toilets are equally handy for anybody who is suffering from nausea or diarrhoea after the cable car ride.

Unfortunately the toilets were the hole-in-the-ground type, requiring you to balance, with your sense of balance gone after the nerve-wracking cable car ride, and stand on two steps over a hole. Flies were circling.

No toilet paper in the cubicle. After you emerge, you find the toilet role outside, the cubicle, like in some toilets in Asia. Unfortunately no running water to dry your hands. Just a turkey barrel, like rain barrel.

Wet Wipes - Improvised
This would be a good time for a supply of wet wipes. They say that necessity is the mother of invention. When I got down to ground level later, I created my own emergency wet wipes for hand washing, wetting a paper towel used for hand drying, wrapped in two other dry paper towels, placed inside a small ziplock bag.

Steps Beyond the Cable Car
I took a few steps out and found everybody ascending a loose soil and rocky way - not as precise as a path. Why no hand rails? I kept sliding down. At the mid-point a rock blocked the ascent. You could stand on the rock and risk falling backwards. Or try walking to the right on the slope and try not to slip backwards. I kept slipping. Already in a state of nerves from the cable, car, I soon retreated.

After watching several couples helping each other up, I tried again, hoping somebody would help me. Nope. Stepping gingerly to the right of the small rock, I slid back again. I retreated again.

What else was I going to do with my day? It was only a few yards to the top and sight of the café. I tried a third time.

Help From Your Backpack
I lurched sideways and dropped my backpack. As I picked it up by one strap I discovered the solution - a new trick. Use your backpack as a hand hold. Or use the bag's weight to hold it steady.

Grasp the backpack strap like a dog lead. The strap is both reassuring mentally and a handy hold to keep you upright.

Café And Sphinx Rock
At the top of the slope I could see the cafe. The exterior was utilitarian, no rustic magic, unlike the prettier gabled wood cafes around the road leading to the cable car base. I looked at the distance and decided to go back down. Apparently, another few steps would have allowed me to see the rock shaped like a Sphinx.

Never mind. I took the cable car back down and saw the pictures of the rock supposedly like a sphinx on postcards.

You may be wondering, just a minute, after all that fuss about the cable car ride up, what about the cable car ride down?

Ah, it was nothing. You just stand at the back and concentrate on the lovely trees. Soon it will all be over, the fears and the joys. Just enjoy the ride.

Souvenirs and Sticks
The souvenir stalls sell postcards of the rock formations, postcards and mug showing girls with tattoos on their back and backsides, rocks and gemstone jewellery in bright colours. Of practical use, folding walking strips are sold in jolly red and other colours. Some sticks have handy wrist straps. The collapsing sticks are useful for folding to pack in a suitcase or back pack,  and blue and other bright colour ponchos.

Beer, Juice, Coffee and Water
When the rest of my group returned, they wanted a drink.We tried a cafe which advertised various juices. Service was slow. Small children were running around screaming and throwing miniature cars across the gangway which exacerbated our nerves and patience.

We decamped next door. At this point the missing waitress appeared to stare after us with a surly expression. No such thing as a smile and can I help you?

Next door the others were happy with orders of beer and local non-alcoholic beer which a driver had drunk the previous day and liked. I could not get any freshly squeezed juice. I perused the menu and found three types of cider. I chose one. Our waitress said they had no cider.

At this point I gave up and decided I needed the toilet. By the time I returned my impatient driver had had a quick short coffee and wanted to drive home, not sit watching non drivers drinking alcohol. So off we went, back to bottled water in the car.

Summary
If you like cable cars, a good place to visit in Romania, whether or not you have the right shoes and state of mind for the uphill walk at the top.

Looking back, how silly of me to be so scared of a cable car. When was the last cable car accident? Several years ago in Switzerland, after a plane flew into the cable?

Cable Car Accident In India
Returning to London, on Jun 24 2017 I read about a cable car accident in India. You might think: Angela was right to be nervous.

Or you might think: So what? Accidents happen on planes and trains and cars worldwide. Besides, this accident was nowhere near Europe.

Or you might think: A good thing the accident happened after Angela took the cable car ride!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-40398890 (Story of cable car accident in India.)

PHOTOS AND MORE WEBSITES WILL BE ADDED SHORTLY
Tips
Whether you are solo, a small family group, or a large group of almost 30 trekkers, as we were, it's wise to check out the opening times of cable cars. For example, the organiser of our trip phoned the cable car office but got no reply on the Tuesday so he drove from Basov to Busteni to check the cable car would be operating as our group's scheduled walk went from the top of the table car. Our organiser found that Tuesday was the day that the cable car closed to give staff a day off. The cable car stayed open at the weekend and Monday, because many tourists had a short holiday of a long weekend.

However, the cable car planned to be open on the day of our group trip on the 23rd, Friday.
When I checked the teleferic website I saw some notices about closures for maintenance.

Hotels
We stayed in Brasov at the Aro Palace Hotel, which had an indoor swimming pool. I shall describe Aro Place hotel in a later post.

www.teleferic.ro

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have several other posts about Romania. Please share links to your favourite posts.