OVERVIEW TO BLOG & OUR TRIP

Day 5 Monday 9 May 2022 Logrono travel to Baztan Valley and Elbete village.

Only 20 patrons in the Hotel Bracos for Monday breakfast, the weekend rush is now long since past. The server said that each weekend day had more than 100 people for breakfast. Only 2 full trips from floor 7 to the garage at -1 floor in the garage only 3 of the original 8 cars remain. Luggage loaded, Jane walked to the door release button while Paul backed up into a vacate slot directly behind his overnight slot location and then he had to navigate around two pillars to align properly to climb up and out of the garage with an inch or two safety on each side with mirrors tucked into park position. Paul made it without any scratches. That was very close and even more confined that the elevators at some garages. Luckily this car is not too big.

Miguel Gil  Mendi grave

Parking is at a premium in every town in Spain and most parking lots and garages cater to small cars.

Elizondo Church

Just a little way out of town on the highway to Pamplona Paul was making fun of the Ford Puma GPS system which grossly butchered the pronouncing of Zaragoza whereupon the GPS screen froze with a notice that the Ford garage should be visited soon to clear the GPS system fault. I swear to God she had heard Paul giving her and ear full and shutdown!!  Our TomTom did not understand the village of “Elizondo” and so we fired up our Carmen Garmin who knew exactly where we were going. ( and yes, Paul insisted on taking both the TomTom and the old Garmin with us! Sigh!) Paul did pull over to a roundabout and shut the car off for a couple of minutes (Same as Control Alt & Delete on the PC. But the maps screen did not totally go blank and when the engine was started the fault warning continued!! How are we going to get around theC
Pamplona bypass now without a functioning GPS?? Never fear, Carmen Garmin is on the job!

Cementary Faces Gorramendi

We actually made it through Pamplona without a problem and headed for Elizondo. We are on our home turf now! We actually drove right through the middle of Pamplona basically the way we had gone thru town back in the 1970s without any bypass and certainly without any GPS back then. When we got to the Baztan, Paul wanted to fill up the car even though it was saying we still had about 250 Km left on the tank. Besides the 95 octane gas unleaded was only 1.59€ per liter and other stations were charging 1.83€

Elizondo new house on way to Posada.

a very handsome price drop!! Guess what after refueling and turning off/on the engine the Ford Puma GPS cleared its fault and began working again!!! Now we are armed with ALL THREE GPS plus our Michelin Map book; watch out Spain we are ON THE ROAD AGAIN!!!!

Sepia View of Elizondo Bldg

We drove straight to the apartment to get the keys and then dropped the luggage, next we drove and parked next to the church and had a drink + we saw Guillermo at Mendi’s Bar out on the patio where decided it was time for lunch. Guillermo was finished working for the day and was off for his bicycle exercise but wanted to drop off his laptop at his mother’s house to place a facetime phone call later to Gary to check up on his impending knee replacement surgery. Monday night we ended up having supper at Bar Sobrinos and learned that they close on Wednesdays.

Elbete village next to our apartment