Boog's Blog

Sunday, Assumption day, holiday.

mostly a shopping day. Picked up lots of odds and ends in a few nice things.

well, remembered from a previous visit

The man in the red shirt is a local politician who we chatted with for a while. He like others realize Trump is a con man though they use the term corruption.

I watched them for a while. Professional grade probably been playing as a group for decades. 

Very nice relaxed dinner.

Massive day at Les Halles.

Giant special fireworks.

The downside of France: everywhere outside you smell cigarette smoke. In cafés, plazas, just walking around

A.I. stuff: The August 15th fireworks show (Biarritz sous les étoiles) is one of the biggest summer events on the French Basque Coast. The significance and symbolism behind the date stem from two major cultural reasons:

1. Assumption Day (L’Assomption)

2. Napoleon III & Biarritz’s Royal Heritage.  he built a palace here and turned this fishing village into what it is today. 

August 15th was historically Saint-Napoléon Day (la Fête Napoléon), the official national day established under Emperor Napoleon III.

Perfect!

Perfect hard crust

Dual fireworks, from the lighthouse and from the big rocks. both displays converge over the plage.

One of the best fireworks we have seen. Some really creative hearts, and stars and weeping willows and on and on and on really first rate. 

We took the slow route, which is the easy route without having the giant mountain passes with nauseating switchbacks.

Impressive tunnels some well over a kilometer. Again, a full day of driving without seeing a single pothole on roads that are absolutely perfect and higher speed limits than we have.

The last 50 km into Biarritz were terrible. long 5-10-15 minute queues at each tollbooth of which there were many. Then, to hotel, which is in centre ville. We had Directions how to get in by some circuitous route, opening barriers by giving them a call, people behind us coming out of their cars and banging on our window, that type of thing, roads to small for our car, as you would expect.

Our room was not quite ready so we went for a walk and stopped at a bar for a beer and what did they have there but our favs: patatas bravas and peppers de padron. Yeah! Yum.

City is a madhouse for shopping eating ice cream and just eating.

Hoards everywhere eating, drinking, socializing, maybe more.

Fireworks tomorrow at midnight, we think.

Stupidly hot with high of 102F.

Side trip to Briones

“Perched on a rocky outcrop in the Rioja Alta subregion of La Rioja, Briones is widely considered one of the most picturesque medieval towns in northern Spain.”

But not quite as picturesque as LaGuardia.

14th century church according to the guides (another Sta. Maria).

QB has video of the details but this shows the medieval village as it would look on one day in June

Dinner in traditional restaurant. Francis Paniego, chef with Michelin stars, restaurant a la carte dinner.

The big day!

Almost 100 degrees just before eclipse.

First a visit to an archeological site. Two signs: one said open today, the other not. Not

So, we drove to Logroño. A good town we knew from the walk on the Camino, we had eaten there and seen the cathedral. It too was closed until 5 PM

99 F and Eclipse event begins – it is 18:30

The picture is from the outdoor patio a lovely place to sit at 95° and have a three star Michelin chef prepared heavy dinner. I fussed, it seems no one else fussed, surprise. They have agreed to let us eat privately in an air-conditioned space- the wine bar. Service was excellent.

The muscadet wine was a dessetin itself.

Hotel breakfast. Good rolls, coffee, cake. Stingy re yogurt. Not enough fruit. Meat and salami lovers paradise.

Laguardia, a medieval hilltop town that is mostly pedestrian with two major churches, one on the north and one on the south side. The one on the north side has the oldest polychrome collection, including a polychrome portal from the 17th century. The church was built in the 13th (gothic) and then redone with more added (totally baroque) in the 17th.

No cars due to soft underpinnings

Nice tourist town, good to walk about in the am before the 95 degree heat sets in.

Then you are admitted to the inside, which is closed to the public except by tour.

Residence in the hotel includes this winery tour. Many tourists come for this “experience “. Especially good if you never toured Napa or other regional wineries.

Along with discussion of color, smell, and notes of course.

Just wanted to compare with the others. Yes, better and more to my liking but the others were also ok to good.

Small town (950 population) next to a bucket list hotel- a Michelle recommendation- designed by Frank Gehry.

It is our choice of where to see the event.

Vitoria-Gasteiz, a stop on the way. Capital of Basque Country, site of 13th century gothic cathedral of Ken Follett’s World Without End for those non cathedral buffs. Vitoria-G appears to be on the route of the Camino del Norte. We noticed some waymarks.

First of three. 20th century Maria Immaculata (closed); 15th century San Miguel (open); 13th century St. Mary (closed for renovation and archaeology; tours by appointment) being a large cathedral of famous novel.

Under major to reconstruction with tours of the rubble site and separate entry to each area, we decided not to do the tours and move on .

Only because I just finished the book called Stone by Richard Rhodes

The drive from the mountains down into the valley is a long tortuous switchback drive, taking an hour to go relatively few kilometers 

No place for just a drink or any service so down the narrow town road to the hotel. 

Marques de Riscal. Made it in time for a snack. Impressive snack.

When we got to the hotel, they mentioned that people drive around in circles and circles around Elciego trying to find a way out. Certainly the problem we had. Internet, hardly exists nor cell service

Then to room

Many thanks to Michelle for telling us about this place.

Sunday: the city is shut down. Food of course, and museums and little else.  mostly a rest day for us. 

A landmark from days past a manufacturing brand name

Just not in the mood to go past the gift shop. P

A nice afternoon walk before the nap and then your obligatory San Jose Church

New 1947 ish

Spanish breakfast before cooking class.

Cooking class on other side of bridge. Paella and burnt basque cheesecake with three grades of wine and a slurp of horrible cider. Class started 11 in the morning.

Excellent and very experienced chef led the class. All well explained. The class from start to finish, including eating was four hours.

Basically close to a NYC cheesecake- no crust.

“We” made two paellas from scratch. Stock for seafood version and stock for meat version. Then the roasting of parts and very slow cooking of rice. Final product: too salty for me and similarly for Sharon. Seafood paella was better than the meat.

Aprons still on.

Walked to old town in 32-33 degree heat. Had to stop to get water. Immediate dehydration.

Great bar there for pinxos but far too hot to eat, especially after the three wine and coffee cooking class ( we drank little-local wines too sweet and cider too sour).

Back at hotel instead of going for ice cream- shower needed!

Post nap, off to find Bar Artajo.

Bar was fairly quiet when we arrived and extremely busy when we left.

One of our favs. Not a regional speciality, more Barcelona but we found an excellent version.

Our favorite peppers de Padron are not Basque enough, apparently. The local peppers show up here as peppers de Guernika. Often they are served in the same way as Pedron but in the restaurant they happen to put them on the sandwich.

Capped the evening off with ice cream while a massive thunderstorm provided a lightening show. Went well with the mint chip.

Breakfast at at local gastropub

Guggenheim Museum

Cafe Iruña

Cortes Ingles

Nice nap

A very Spanish breakfast

Not one of our favorites by a long long shot. A very large exhibit with an enormous number of wire turnings very few of interest to us, but it was the major exhibits.

This may be the largest retrospective of his. I’m not a big fan, but I really like this particular piece. I suspect he would’ve colored it different today

This was an exceptionally interesting exhibit of double-sided, carpets, mostly high, hung on the walls, but some in the middle of the room. Incredibly detailed bead work metal work fabric on, and on the summary above, gives some hint of it. 

Seen at one of the many shops in this bustling town 

We’ve seen this exhibit a few times and a few different museums never from this view.

This café is so old and so important to the local culture. It is on every tourist map. We ran into it on previous visits and had to come back. my impression has not changed. Is that it caters to the locals and is moderately rude and inconsiderate when trying to order from them on a system that requires local knowledge. I found a menu online but not in the place for example

——-interlude——

Breaking news, breaking news, breaking news: many know of my interest in phages.

Scientists have used artificial intelligence to design new viruses that don’t occur in nature and can infect bacteria, according to a study published yesterday. The breakthrough could accelerate efforts to fight antibiotic-resistant infections by creating customized viruses.

The researchers trained AI models on the genetic blueprints of roughly 2 million bacteriophage—viruses that infect bacteria, not humans—before building thousands of new viral designs. Lab testing showed 16 AI-made viruses killed E. coli, including strains resistant to naturally occurring phages. The work could help advance phage therapy, an experimental alternative to antibiotics, as drug-resistant infections are expected to kill roughly 40 million people worldwide by 2050. Researchers caution that increasingly powerful AI tools raise biosafety and biosecurity questions. 

Bacteriophages are the most abundant biological entities on Earth, including in the human body. More than 10 nonillion bacteriophages exist at any given time. 

———blog recommences——-

The third stationary store of the day. Much admired, little acquired. this pic from Cortes

Insert pic here of fruit consumed but not pictured. Local Mercado, blueberries, peach, plutot.

Smoking: almost everywhere.

Taken from the high bridge