BILBAO arrival

We arrived on time in Bilbao via air France from Paris. It did not appear that our luggage had made it though so we went and stood in the line to report lost luggage. It was a very slow moving line so I cruised around to see if I could find an Air France representative to ask about the bags. Found one and learned that our bags were in the customs clearance area. We were very happy and took a taxi to our hotel Le Petite Palace which is located in the old quarter (Casco Viejo). As we had arrived so early we could not get into our room which was okay as we had to head to the Post Office (Correos) to send our care packages out to the various city post offices along the route. Both the hotel receptionist and the Correos staff were very helpful. Total cost for the packages was 39€.

I wish I had spent more time on my Spanish! We took a tram to the bus station to buy our tickets to Pamplona. Our receptionist told us to be sure and validate our tram tickets which was helpful as we would not have known to do that otherwise. After checking into our room we asked Lorraina, the receptionist, at which church we could get a sello (stamp)for our Credential (spiritual passport). She sent us across the street to the tourist office and they gave us our first stamp shown here. We then walked through the old quarter with it´s lovely balconies, flowers and plants covering the railings and a few undersides of the balconies had tiles. We had a tasty lunch of salad mista, omelette with mushrooms and "green garlic", and beef stew. (cost 25€, the same as taxi ride in)

At Dulles airport we each had purchased a mastercard "cash passport" in euros. This cash card we had seen discussed on the yahoo Santiagobis threads and thought it might be good for us to get one as another source of cash in addition to our B of A debit card. Just in case the ATM card didn´t work.....this already happened to us when we were looking for money to pay for the postage so we christened the euro cash card.