We had most of last week off and so we took an excursion. Just hopped on the train and after a little more than half an hour, and lots of near-comical Basque town signs later, we were in the French Republic. Hendaia is still the Basque Country, but people speak a different dialect of Euskara, and fewer people know it there than
where we live. We were just across the river from Hondarribia, which is in the Spanish state-where you would never know you were right on the border because there isn't much signage in French-but in 
Hendaia, there's a lot of stuff written in Spanish-you can get paid a lot more to work in France, and the real estate is equal or less than what you pay here, so there are a lot of Spanish citizens who decide to learn French and improve their fortune. You also see the same calls for Basque independence from the Spanish state as you see on the other side of the border. Interestingly, all the train tracks built in the Spanish state during the time of Franco are a different width than those built in other parts of Europe-to prevent invading armies from getting supplies through. If you're taking an older track you have to stop at the border so they can fit an adapter to your train so you can cross. We walked along the coast of Hendaia, where there are many campsites and places to stay for summer vacation, and on to the Chateau Abbadie.
The castle was built relatively recently-in the late 1800s-by Antoine D'Abbadie. He was an interesting guy -born to aristocratic parents, his father was from Zuberoa (which is a Basque province known in French as Soule) and his mother was Irish. During his life he was an astronomer, anthropologist, and linguist. He spent a number of years in Ethiopia as well as the Middle East and Brazil. He had his own observatory, which was functional well into the 1970s, where he and his colleagues took manual observations with a telescope that is still at the castle, and made calculations to map 
the stars. The castle is now administered by the French Academy of Sciences, 
which recently restored the interior over a period of ten years. You're not allowed to photograph the inside, but there is a virtual tour online that I recommend. The place is just absolutely bananas-there are a lot of very detailed paintings of Ethiopian life, with springbok heads and ornate hand-painted wallpaper in Ethiopian patterns. The furniture is all heavy tropical wood with intricate carvings, and everything is symbolic-either from Catholicism, Ethiopia, the Arab world, or Ireland. All the rooms had fireplaces and gorgeous 
furniture that was all done up with marquetry or whatever. It's hard to imagine why the rich folks now living would ever put up with cruddy Prada stuff in light of what it used to mean to be wealthy. I mean, the craftsmanship was just ridiculous. Abbadie was buds with Napoleon, who stayed in the Emperor's bedroom, and the family had their own personal chapel, where Antoine and his wife were buried. The castle overlooks the sea and the exterior is ornamented with all kinds of stone animals- snakes, snails, elephants, crocodiles, cats, and conch shells. Anybody who visits will be going to see this place because I want to go back...Pictures I wish I had taken this week: Bolivian woman in downtown Donostia wearing a traditional bowler hat and an iridescent (I am talking about Little Mermaid Blue) dress of her own design. Very inauspicious among all the elegant European ladies. A flock of 40 snow-white egrets-at first I saw them through the trees with a herd of sheep, and for a second, it looked like the sheep were flying. An ad in a bank window with a picture of a Sean Connery look-alike with a jovial expression at the helm of a ship with the caption "Retire like a German..bank with Caja Laboral." Do Germans all get boats when they retire? I want to know.
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