From the Picos de Europa we drove we to Bilbao to meet up with my brother Todd and his wife Stephanie, who moved to Zurich in late 2007, and joined us for the better part of a week. We all like to talk, we all like to eat, and we all like to drink. So that's pretty much what we did. No site seeing to speak of just. Just eating, drinking, and talking. Then we drank, talked and ate. Then we talked, drank, and ate. You get the picture.

We were introduced to Euskara, the language of the Basque Country, and the only thing we really picked up is that the letters tx make a ch sound. For example, the way they do tapas in this part of the country is by making pintxos, pronounced PEEN-chos. Pinxtos are smaller versions of tapas, sometimes just a few bites of a sandwich. But they come in all shapes and styles (as you can see below) and almost all of them are ridiculously good.

In both cities we stayed in small, very artsy places. In Bilbao, it was the Iturrienea Ostatua, located in a nice shopping district. In San Sebastian we stayed at the Pension Balerdi, also nice but a little grungier but you'd never know it by their slick web site. We really enjoyed both places.