Day: April 11, 2024

For years we have gotten Spanish SIMs from Vodafone. They are kind of the t-mobile of Spain, that is, they usually have the best deals but not always the best coverage. They also have the slow and generally incompetent employees. They did not disappoint today. Wynette got her SIM but it turns out that they do not support eSIMs for prepaid plans. IPhones 14 and 15 (mine) don’t support physical SIMs. My T-mobile eSIM works in Spain but at lower speeds so I’ll just go with that. A quick check of Movistar and Orange (the other Spanish carriers) shows they don’t support eSIMs for prepaid plans either.

In the elevator.

I’m all in favor of no smoking in the elevator but silence? I do admit that Wynette and I do talk in the elevator.

Here is a notice from our hotel room.

Is forbidden stronger than not allowed? No walking without shoes?

After getting off the bus we wanted to check our backpacks. Perplexity (google it) led us to a hotel which led us to the tourist office which led us to a phone store which, among other things, checked luggage. So we climbed the little mountain without packs.

The first part of the Norte is Basque country. You may have noticed the oddly spelled names that don’t seem remotely Spanish. Basque is a language isolate and is the last remaining pre-Indo-European language in Europe. Here is a notice from our room so you can compare it to some other languages. It is the one without a flag.

Basque country has an odd language but great pinxos.

Mountains climbed: 1 out of 2
Stair steps missed not climbing the mountain: 312
Stair steps up to Monte Urgull: < 312?(although we walked down also)
Phone SIMs purchased: 1
Phone eSIMs purchased: 0
Backpacks checked: 2

Remember how the first Norte stage was the hardest? After climbing Jaizibel from Irun to Passajes, the camino climbs Mount Ulia on the way to San Sebastián. The forum talks about “endless steps”, actually 312, and the “knee punishing” downhill. We decided against further knee punishing (after all they haven’t been naughty) and take the bus the San Sebastián and walk around there. SS has it’s own Monte Urgull so we climbed it and walked around the town for a total of seven miles.

We’ll talk about phones in the next posts, and backpacks.

The road not taken.