San Juan de Gatxugalatxe

    The day finally came!  I finally got to visit the site in Europe that I had been anticipating most.  And it was right in my backyard!

    We didn't have class today for Spanish Labor Day.  I went with a group of friends this morning to San Juan de Gatxugalatxe which is an old monastery between the towns Bakio and Bermeo which are both in Bizkaia.  It was about a 45 minute bus ride to Bakio to get to the starting point to get to the starting point.
We had to hike 3 miles to the starting point of the hike to San Juan by following the highway up a mountain.  I won't forget to mention that this is a steep highway without shoulder to walk on.

    The day was way better than we had expected.  It was 60 degrees in the early morning and we had all packed coats and I had a backpack full of extra clothes in case it rained.  We never ended up needing any of that.  The walk up the mountain was beautiful and you could tell that this is a wealthier area to live in compared to the other parts of the country we had driven through in the past.  All of the houses were huge.  Along the walk there was tons of wildlife, or almost wildlife.  Cows, sheep, roosters, dogs...everything that was normal for me.  We did see a wild hog at one point but that was nothing compared to the lizards crawling around everywhere!  I didn't even know before yesterday that there were lizards in Spain.  You could hear them the entire hike lurking through the tall grass.

    It took about an hour and a half to walk up the mountain and arrive at the beginning of our actual hike.  The first part was downhill through rocks and dirt and the second part was up over 300 stairs to get to the church.  There was hand railing most of the way but you didn't want to put your hand down on it because there were lizards everywhere.  The hike wasn't half bad, and we ended up at the top in less than a half hour.

    The view from the top of the hike was amazing.  Indescribable actually.  The best part of the view was the stairs that we had just climbed.  The monastery wasn't anything special.  The view from the monastery is the real attraction.  We had lunch at the top and then headed back down.

    We hiked back down the mountain which took a lot less time.  We still had an hour before the bus would return to take us back to Bilbao so we sat at the beach for awhile.  It had gotten cold by this point but there were still surfers out in the water.  At the beach I had ran into Naia, the girl I tutor and her family.  How weird to see someone you know when you visit a new town in a foreign country!  I slept the entire bus ride home and then most of the afternoon after this trip.