I had all this plans to keep blogging over the course of my Spring Break. However, I learned that the cruise ship would not have free wifi so I opted out of hauling my laptop over the Mediterranean. Then I was too tired most of the week to mess with blogging from my little iPhone. I am now slowly catching up on my blog posts.
This first one will be devoted to my parents' arrival in Pamplona. My mom always said that if I went abroad she would come to visit. So when I found out my Spring Break, she started planning a trip to visit. Somehow, she managed to talk my dad into coming as well and for us to take a cruise around the Mediterranean. Good job, Mom! It was a fantastic week and so fun to see my parents again.
One of the ways my mom got my dad to agree to the trip was to make this their 25th wedding anniversary trip--just a year early. Works for me! They flew into Barcelona on a Monday and spent until Wednesday looking around the city on their own. For obvious reasons. My last day of classes was on Wednesday, so they got a train from Barcelona and arrived in Pamplona in the evening. They had wanted to see where I live and meet Carmen.
I had told Carmen about their coming as soon as I knew about it myself. She was actually really looking forward to it as well. She came to the train station with me to pick them up and then went with us to the hotel. The next day, she helped me show the parents around the city and then made all of us a huge lunch. More on that later.
While we were at the train station, I told Carmen to look for a red head and that would probably be my mom. She got a laugh out of that. After we met up with my parents, I had to try my hand at being a translator. The hardest part was that all of them would talk to me at once so it was hard to keep things organized and know who to talk to. It was a fun challenge.
In the taxi, Carmen told me to put my seatbelt on, which my mom loved. My mom was so glad to have met Carmen and they seemed like they got along really well. They were able to communicate even with the language barrier. I think Carmen understands a little English and my mom knows the Spanish that rubs off on you from living in America.
After the hotel, I took my parents to the old part of the city to get some pintxos and look around. If you've heard of tapas, pintxos (pronounced peen-chos) are the Basque version. Very tasty. We went to the little bar that has the best tortillas in Pamplona, or so I've been told, and they were excellent. Then I took them to the Casco Viejo for some more typical pintxos. The problem was that it was raining, of course, and we only had my umbrella so we cut the trip short. They were tired because of jet lag anyway.
The next day, we met up in a little café that we had found the night before that was close to their hotel. I took them to my university to show them around and then we got their luggage to take back to where I live. We dropped off the bags and picked up Carmen to go to the old part. We walked around some of the prettiest and historical parts of Pamplona. There are several fort-like parts of Pamplona that still remain. Pamplona is close to France so it has seen several French-Spanish battles.
About 12 or so, Carmen left us to go to the house to prepare lunch. We had a couple more pintxos and café con leche at a bar she recommended as a snack because lunch wasn't until 3. They were all very delicious. After that, we walked around some more. I took them through a few of the shopping areas and by a few cathedrals. We looked at a pretty museum building as well. Then it was getting to be the time to head back, so we headed to the Cuidadela, which is the historical citadel located between the old city and where I live. What was funny is that, a week later in Barcelona, we saw one that was like a giant version of the one in Pamplona. It's cool to see the similarities in architecture.
Lunch was a big ordeal. Normally, Carmen will give me a soup or salad and then a main dish and fruit or yogurt for dessert. She pulled out all the stops for this lunch. She served a potato salad, soup, stuffed peppers, bread, and torijas for dessert. I might be forgetting something as well. It was so much food. She also served wine with lunch and a delicious dessert wine after lunch. THEN she made us all café con leche. She also pulled out special tableware that I didn't know she had. All in all, it was very nice.
After lunch, she called us a taxi to take us to the train station. We took a train from Pamplona to Barcelona. We would be catching our cruise the following evening.
To be continued... ;)
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