As at this typing, the folks at EasyGroup have made money from our vacation three ways. First, we flew from London to Bilbao on EasyJet, second, we rented a car for two days from EasyCar. And now I sit in the EasyEverything Internet cafe in Barcelona, they get their third stack of money.

All of our experiences with this company have been positive: they run the kind of no frills, no bullshit company that makes you look at other companies and think “why on earth would they ever do that?”.

EasyJet offers very cheap flights within Europe. It’s like JetsGo or WestJet, but with many more flights, and a much more mature set of policies. Web booking accounts for 95% of their reservations. No advanced seating (unless, like us, you have kids in tow, in which case you get to board first). No peanuts or free drinks (although you can buy both). Quick turnaround of planes. Our London to Bilbao experience was quick, efficient, and very bus-like.

EasyCar exposes the costs of renting a car to you, and lets you absorb those you want to, and offset others. For example, if you wash and clean the car before returning, you save 16 euros. If you return the car within a given hour-long window, you save 24 euros penalty. You can only book a car on their website, and all their internal applications are web-based as well, meaning, presumably, they can quickly fire up new operations when and where required. We rented a little Toyota Yaris to take us south of Barcelona. While it was about 1/2 the size of the Jetta we drive at home, it was more than enough car for the task and, indeed, its small size made navigating the insanely small alleys of Spanish villages possible.

Like cars and jets, EasyEverything’s web pricing model is based on demand. They have 300 terminals here in their Plaza Catalunya facility, and the more free terminals there are, the cheaper access is. I’m paying 80 cents an hour right now — presumably the person who came in after me is paying a little bit more. You buy tickets from a central machine, take your chit to a terminal, and enter a code. And then you’re online. As far as I can see, there are no staff. An industrialist’s delight, and Leo Cheverie’s worst nightmare.

They only way to get a grip on what this means on the ground is to dig in for yourself; fortunately this is cheap to do if you are in Europe. And, with luck, some day you’ll be able to fly Easy from North America too.

So we decided to brave the roads south of Barcelona and have been touring since Friday evening. Our base has been the excellent Hotel Victoria in Segur de Calafell, a nice older place where we are, I think, the only guests. Yesterday we drove high into the hills and ate bread and cheese halfway up a mountain at a small rest stop with ornately tiled fountain. Does it get better than that? Later in the day we came back to sea level and Oliver swan in the ocean. Today we head back to take another stab at Barcelona.

We made it to Barcelona. But there’s nary a hotel room within 10km of the city centre, so we are renting a car and heading off into the sunset for the weekend. Warm here. No rain. Zaragoza was amazing. Internet running out, so must sign off.

Never were more innocent words spoken. I just wanted a glass of white house wine. We were at Restaurante Nicolas last night, for our first real late-night Bilbao dinner (nobody goes out to eat before 20h here). Once we figured out the obscure “restaurants are located behind a secret door at the back of the bar” system, we were flying.

Our small pale balding old waiter, every inch a gentleman, brought us a simplified English menu, which was a saving grace at the end of a day of stumbling our way through Spanish. Catherine ordered the lamb chops, and I the hake with red peppers. And the aforementioned “vino blanco de la casa.”

In short order the glass of wine arrived, and after a couple of sips, along came the bottle.

Those who know me will know that I am just as likely to cut off my foot as to drink more than a couple of glasses of wine, so this came as something of a surprise. But being still inside that “strangers in a strange land” terror that is foreign language tourism, I smiled and undertook my task. Thankfully Catherine pitched in to aid.

The hake was very good, and it was followed by a dessert called, in English, “a little bit of everything” which was just that — tart, chocolate, eclair, puff, ice cream. Dreamy all of it. Catherine’s lamb chops were very good as well, and she ordered the same dessert and had the same reaction. Oliver had a little bit of all of the above, and seemed to enjoy it as much as we did. The waiter took a liking to him, and brought some roll cookies out at the end of the night which made him very happy.

At the end of the night — about midnight — we headed off into the raininy Bilbao night, and, thanks to Catherine’s clear head, made it home to our hotel in one piece. I haven’t ordered wine since.

Today it rained, again, and our spirit was slightly diminished as a result. We made the best of it all, though, and took the wonderful Bilbao subway out to the edge of town where we rode across the river in a giant car carrying gondola, walked up the side of the opposite town in the pouring rain, walked back down along the ocean in the pouring rain, and returned, in the pouring rain, to Bilbao. Where it is pouring rain.

Tomorrow we say good-bye to Bilbao and head south-east by train. We decided not to make for Barcelona in one day, so we are stopping, for at least a night, in Zaragoza. Imagine the ‘z’ pronounced with a slight lisp, and you will see the attraction. We know nothing of the city, which is the point. More to report from the frontier.

I recall that when Peter Jansons first opened The Dunes, it was to be a tapas bar. Perhaps I am imagining this. In any case, tapas are the lifeblood of the eating scene in Bilbao, and yesterday we had our first experience thereof.

We set out on our snacking mission at about 7.30h. About 15 minutes in, it started to rain. Hard. Fast. Wet. We sought shelter under the canopies of shops. Somehow Oliver, by placing his fingers in the lowered shutters in front of a chi chi clothing store, caused an alarm to go off. We left that storefront quickly. Eventually, growing ever more tired and wet, we ambled into Cafe Iruna. This joint was jumping, apparently busy not only from the Sunday evening crowd, but also because of special events surrounding its 100th anniversary.

The idea of tapas is that a wild collection of small snacks is displayed on the counter, and, you order little bits of whatever strikes your fancy. In an orgy of soggy hunger, we quickly polished off a couple of slices of french bread covered with ham and marinated mushrooms, followed by some lamb shish kabob roasted on a barbeque in the corner, followed by a couple of glasses of red wine, followed by some ham and cheese. Oliver drank pineapple juice, ate our leavings, and seemed generally content about the entire affair. Total bill was about $8.00. The plan was to head off into the night for dinner afterwards, but we were so happy and well-fed that we simply went home and went to bed.

This morning the soggy theme continued, with the added flourish of having just used up Oliver’s last disposable diaper. We set off into the damp (but not rainy) Bilbao morning, eventually locating the only pack of size 5 diapers in the city in the back of a cosmetics shop near the Guggenheim. We grabbed coffee (and zumo del pina) in a smoky bar, and then made our way, under darkening skies, to Restaurante vegetariano, one of two vegetarian restaurants in the city.

This proved to be exactly what we needed — a four course vegetarian meal (salad, soup, main course and dessert with tea). The food was excellent, and the service wonderful.

When we emerged an hour later, the skies had opened. Fortunately we had purchased an umbrella earlier in the day. Unfortunately, our ‘one umbrella should be fine’ theory proved naive, and Catherine and I got drenched while Oliver hung onto the umbrella, for dear life, in his stroller. A thirty minute dash later, and we arrived soaked to the skim at out hotel.

The rain (in Spain) has let up now, and after Oliver has a nap, we will venture out again. Tomorrow is our day reserved to tour the Guggenheim, so I’m sure there will be much to report.

I must be at least a little close to being an Islander — the first thing I did after I checked my email and updated my website was to check the deaths on the the website of the Guardian. Of course if I was a real Islander, I would have checkd them first.

So we have arrived in Bilbao. It is 36 degrees and sunny here — like we magically teleported ahead by 2 months into summer. After a day of walking around Bilbao, here is what I have noticed (I cannot find the apostrophe on this Spanish keyboard, so I am forced to write without contractions — my first year Classical History professor, David Page, finally gets what he wanted!).

• Everyone walks everywhere. At least on Sunday. We saw more families walking along the river this morning than I have seen in Charlottetown in a decade. Of course I never go outside in Charlottetown, which might explain part of this.
• Everything is in Spanish. Chock this up to stupidity or North American-o-centrism, but I do find it odd that everyone speaks Spanish in Spain. Bilboans would not, I think, find it odd that we speak English in Charlottetown.
• Everything is beautiful here. Manhole covers. Bridges. Mailboxes. Bridges. Trolley cars. Urinals. Sinks. Street lights. They say Bilbao is reinvented since the Guggenheim, but I think there must be a strong design ethic bred into the culture here, because you cannot get this beautiful that quickly otherwise.
• As in Thailand, children are cherished. Interesting 24 hour contrast through Halifax (tolerance), London (annoyance) and Spain (warm acceptance). The mother of the owner of our hotel said that Oliver was perfecto — her daughter explained that she was saying that Oliver was too perfect to be a real boy.

…into the wild blue yonder. Play amongst yourselves.

Like “Kleenex” means “tissue” and “Jello” means “gelatin,” FedEx, at least in my mind, means “overnight.” I always thought the reason we sent things FedEx was so that they would be there the next morning.

Apparently, however, if something is sent from the U.S. to Canada, sending it FedEx means not overnight but rather “in a couple of days.” The FedEx International Priority page describes their international service as “time-definite delivery typically in 1, 2 or 3 business days.” Their delivery standard for Prince Edward Island is delivery by 5:00 p.m. the 2nd business day.

It seems to me that among the things that restricts Prince Edward Island’s economic development this would be at least on the middle of the list. Of course it’s not something unique to the Island (although I suspect FedEx parcels to Toronto and Montreal are next-day delivered most often). But Boston is close enough to Prince Edward Island that you can almost spit on it, and to take 48 hours to wing a parcel here seems closer to “forever” than it does to “overnight.”

Caveat emptor.

As usual Rob is at his best when writing from personal experience.