You can really feel the days are getting shorter. It is still dark when we start to feel awake at 8 am and the sunrise will not happen for another 20 minutes. It will set by 7:30 tonight. Morning temperatures are barely double digits but will reach a blistering 27 degrees by late afternoon. With all that, we could not ask for finer conditions to spend our day in Vitoria-Gasteiz.
We did not add the breakfast option to our stay at Silken Ciudad de Vitoria. It is a very nice hotel and we are sure they have a very nice breakfast too, but we decided to see what would be available in the old centre. Scott`s stomach (not to say anything about his taste buds) can barely handle the instant coffee stuff in the room to get his system into gear.
We found a sunny corner in the Plaza de España and had breakfast pintxos (they seemed to be made for every meal of the day) and excellent, real coffees to begin our day. The nearby tourist office supplied a couple of local maps with one showing a number of murals near the center of town. We chose that objective as it was a bit of a treasure hunt that took us all over the place in a very random walk.
A morning walk through the Florida Garden is very pretty in the sun.
From our sunny breakfast corner in Plaza de España you can pass through the arches right into Vitoria-Gasteiz main Plaza de la Virgen Blanca. So may great publlc spaces liked together really make this a fabulous place to visit.
Memoriaren Plaza. Just a small pretty plaza dedicated to victims of terrorism. The many public areas make it a really exceptional experience for pedestrians.
Our score on the mural treasure hunt may have earned a 60%. Reading the guide map was not easy. We really liked what we could find. They all seemed to have a message. Pat joked that writing a good proposal may have been necessary for the project to get grant money. In the afternoon, we found that we were now way over dresssed for the rising temperatures. We returned to the hotel for a break and to shed some unnecessary layers.
Victoria-Gateiz has a modern looking street car system. From the web, ¨While the year 2012 saw the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz become the European Green Capital, today in 2019 it has been proclaimed Global Green City, joining an exclusive group to have been granted the award which includes cities such as Vienna (Austria), Vancouver (Canada), Oakland (United States).....¨ Vancouver! How about that! No wonder we like this city.
After our mid day break, we left the hotel in more suitable summer entire. We had a plan to head in a new direction, go to a grocer to buy some yogurt and bananas and find a place to have some lunch. Given that today was a national holiday, most of the grocery stores were closed but we did find a great out of the way, local restaurant. For us, this is the holy grail for dining when we travel.
Cycle store window shopping. I have a beautifully crafted steel framed pinarello at home and have they ever changed over the years. Great colours, too!
We left Cafeteria dUe very full and pleased that we may have solved the issue of finding an open restaurant for dinner. Eating a big, late afternoon lunch was a perfect solution as we actually skipped dinner today. Although a siesta may be required! We had one last evening walk about and called it a day. Pat`s fitbit clocked us at about 25K steps for the day in total. Victoria-Gesteiz was done and what a great place to visit.
