La eeR, or Urgencias….

So yes, we’ve already visited a Spanish ER… spoiler alert, everyone is ok… An abundance of caution was applied to a minor situation. You know the kind where your crazy kid (surprisingly not Elliot) bites his tongue really badly outside of the Guggenheim in Bilbao.

Anyway, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover here so let’s get started!

We’ve left Barcelona a few days ago as you might guess. We rented a beat up MB station wagon and traveled cross country to San Sebastián in the Northeast corner of Spain near the border of France.

The Spanish ‘autopista’ toll roads are glorious ~ 600 very smooth and empty kilometers tho driving on it sets you back 50 euro in tolls. So now we’re in the green and mountainous Basque region. The seaside town of San Sebastián is quite nice. There’s a ocean front promenade, load of bakeries even more butcher shops and plenty of tapas bars. Above the old town is a green hillside where our Airbnb is located.

The view from our place is, ahem… unsurpassed.

The airbnb is an old stone building perched on the hillside overlooking the San Sebastián bay. Truly stunning, we’re just totally spoiled. Even the boys are impressed.

On our first day it’s rainy and we head out for our ‘museum day’. We’re headed to the nearby city of Bilbao to visit the Guggenheim. You’ve seen pictures of it…

The building is a sight in and of itself. Right next door is a lovely terrace restaurant where you can get a sandwich and watch the kids play on a huge playground. They have kindly placed a very large collection of spider-webby play structures there. (You know the kind) They boys could sort of get behind the modern art but they were super psyched about the playground.

The Guggenheim featured a huge Warhol, some very cool installations and of course the iconic building.

After our visit to the museum we stopped back at the playground where Jonah promptly bit his tongue… badly, like gushing blood badly. (I’ll spare you the images)

So this was it, our first real test… here was the situation:

• Hurt kid
• Everyone was hungry and pretty tired
• Only phone with data was at 15% battery
• Called our Pediatrician ~ they said “go somewhere” to be seen. (ugggg!)
• We’re in a strange city at the end of an already long day.

So we plug in an ‘Urgent Care’ to Google maps and nervously navigate across town. At the place no one speaks English… somehow Lidia deciphers that they want us to go to an actual hospital, Jonah is bummed but holding up.

We drive across town again (i’m getting pretty good at manic roundabouts). We find the hospital, Lidia gets to see the inside of an actual Spanish ER… They give Jonah a quick look and send us on our way, NBD.

It’s late when we’re able to head home, stopping to have dinner basically at a truck stop (where some very sweet spaniards treated us very well!)

We breath a sigh of relief and sleep in the next day.

Today was much better, way less stressful… exploring this little seaside town is pretty nice. We toured a surprisingly nice aquarium, the boys played at the beach while Lidia napped, we visited a little market and enjoy cheap but good wine.

We’re very thankful to be here! Jonah’s tongue already looks way better. Tomorrow we leave early to head to Santiago de Compostela. About a 7 hour drive along the northern coast of Spain.

So that’s it for now, thanks for tuning in.

Aaron

I’ll leave you with a few signs…

Dogs allowed.

No dogs allowed

Because someone tried this once… come on people, bring your water bottles!