Sun-Mon, May 21 -22 - Flying to Bilbao

  

Maddie Cat trotted into her Junior Suite at the Cat House Hotel on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday morning Bob and I packed up and left at 10:15 AM for our 3:35 PM  flight to Heathrow.  Traffic was stop and go about half the way but we managed to get to Alamo in our rental car by 12:30...then the bus to the Bradley Terminal took another 30 minutes.  Not to worry, as our British Air flight was delayed two and a half hours!   

Champagne flight!

We were kindly given an $18 voucher for food and headed over to Vino Volo for flights of wine and a mini pizza and tortellini with cheese.   That used some of our time, and we read and wandered until we were finally called onto our Airbus A380 - very nice, quiet plane especially in our premium economy seats with extra leg room and a small locker next to the window to store stuff, plus a glass of champagne before liftoff ! 

We had a pretty good streak dinner, dozed on and off until we were suddenly over green fields with dark green hedgerows and there we were in Heathrow.  We got on the bus from Terminal 5 and went to Terminal 3, a long 15 minute, rocking bus ride, and then went into the Club Aspire Lounge where we had reserved a three hour stay for our 5-hour, now 1.5 hour, layover.  It was OK and we got soup, quiches and ginger ale before it was time to go to our gate for the flight to Bilbao.  Bob and I both had window seats, rows 20 & 21, and had wonderful views of Surrey, Brittany, and, finally, the lush green mountainous north coast of Spain.  We cruised past steep mountain peaks and landed in Bilbao, a nice small airport, through immigration, to a delightful lady at the Europcar Rental desk.

We got a black diesel Audi and tried to exit the rental car park...there was no signage.  Who knew what level we were below the ground?  We started up a "down" slot, managed to turn around, finally found the correct "up" slot, but it had a place to insert a ticket in order to open a gate??!!  I got out and walked to the car behind us and in my fractured Spanish asked him how to get out.  He was confused but somehow found a paper ticket which worked and we escaped  the airport!

We drove about 10 minutes and arrived at the Palacio Urgoiti, a 17th century palace where we have a gorgeous room with a huge balcony.  The marine layer had come in and it was lovely gray  and cool, rather like Santa Barbara.  It was 8 PM by then and we wanted a small snack and so down we went to the bar where we ordered a bottle of a local Rioja wine, one roast beef sandwich and French fries.  We were enjoying our 12 Euro, quite good, wine when our waiter brought out a large basket of fried baby squid and bread!  What to do?  If we ate this we wouldn't be able to stuff in the sandwich and fries...and get a good night's sleep. Eventually the excellent sandwich arrived and thankfully the fries didn't and we survived to figure out another day!

The Palacio's bar