Chocolate caliente

Spanish hot chocolate. is. amazing.

Forget powder and hot water or mini-marshmallows. Chocolate here is a deliciously thick sludge that would choke the Nestle Quik bunny in seconds flat. It's made from solid chocolate grated and melted with hot milk or cream until it's just barely liquid enough to drink. Forget Starbuck-scale servings--a small mug is all you need. And remember to ask for a spoon, or you'll end up with a chocolately chin trying to get the last drops out of the bottom of your mug.

Biarritz, France

"There's no such thing as bad weather, only badly dressed," goes a Scottish proverb. Whether or not the Basques have an equivalent proverb, they sure take the sentiment expressed by this one to heart.

The French Basque coast is a popular tourist destination for the French and Spanish alike. In the summer. Why did we decide to go in mid-November, in the heart of one of the rainiest autumns this region has had for years? For the trip of getting away for a weekend, visiting another country, hearing another language, trying something new; basically, for the hell of it.

The French border is a little over an hour away by car on the highway. (Actually, make that lack of a border; in today's Europe, the only way you know you've crossed from one country to another is that the road signs change language.) And though Euskal Herria (Basque Country) straddles that border, the French Basque country has a flavour quite distinct from the Spanish Basque Country.

Biarritz is a tourist town, no doubt about it. And not a seaside fishing village-a NICE tourist town, with high-class hotels ( though thankfully some low-end ones too!), a selection of fine dining, and lots of quaint, yet expensive shops. The winding streets of its centre are clean and orderly. The beach is omnipresent, right in the centre of town, and there are several promendades that let you walk out on the rocks that jut out from the coast. Though it was by no means a ghost town during our visit, you could just imagine Biarritz must transform into another place altogether come summer.

The air in Biarritz was one of a pretention of classiness. Though I won't go as far as using words like haughty or snobby, there was definitely a contrast with the vibe in Bilbao, which is quite down-to-earth.

But one thing that we observed from Basques on both sides of the border was a willingness to continue with their lives despite the grey skies and windy rain that hung over the weekend. As we made our way home on Sunday the Basque coast from Biarritz through San Sebastian all the way to Bilbao was full of people making the most out of their Sunday afternoon. "What's some torrential rain to keep us from our family Sunday afternoon walk along the shore? All we need is head-to-toe raingear and a couple of humungous umbrellas."

Must be something in their genes.

¿Entrevista?

I was explaining an activity to a group of Grade Sevens the other day.

¨Prepare some questions, because you're going to interview your partner, " was greeted by raucous laughter.

"Wow," I thought to myself, "it's an interesting activity, but not THAT much fin."

Their teacher took me aside later and told me that the Spanish equivalent of Playboy is called Interview.

Vitoria-Gasteiz

If I had to evoke the landscapes of the Basque Country with one phrase, it would be red clay rooftops and lush green hills. While southern Spain chokes on dusty heat and dry plains, the north is a vibrant green.

Except in the fall, when those green hills turn yellow, brown and red. The colours aren't quite as vibrant as their Canadian counterparts, and the leaves turn about a month later than they do in at home. But fall colours are fall colours-you can't deny their prettiness

So that's why we took the back road to Vitoria-Gasteiz, a city of about 300,000 people, 45 minutes from Bilbao. The back road is longer than the highway but the extra time is made up for in pictoresque views as the hilly road winds through villages and farmland.

The road between Vitoria and Bilbao takes you uphill from sea level to about 500m, which isn't that much, but it means that there's a palpable temperature difference. On the drive into town we wondered out loud why people were walking around in gloves and scarves-and when we got out of the car we found out why. Brrrrrr. The only solution was to seek refuge in the finest of Vitoria's Chinese buffets.

When you visit most cities here, you go straight for the Casco Viejo. The architecture's medieval, the streets winding, and bars and cafes plentiful and atmospheric. Vitoria's old town surprised me in that it had a slightly different flavour than Bilbao's-much more wood in the architecture, and African and Mid-Eastern restaurants and groceries everywhere you turned. We wandered around for a long while before ending up in a bright, airy cafe that overlooked the Casco's expansive main plaza for a coffee to end off the afternoon.

The joy of Sunday afternoon day trips out of Bilbao is that they are as simple as that. There are so many sites nearby-you pop out, see what you want to see, have a bite to eat or a coffee, and you're back home by nightfall.

Canada's cultural embassadors

Simple Plan, a.k.a. the best fake-heavy, super cheezy pop-rock band to ever come out of Laval, are playing in Bilbao next week. There are posters all over the place.

I overheard two people having this huge argument in the metro over whether the name of the band was pronounced /sim-play plan/ or /sim-pool plan/. It was rally hard not to turn and tell them that the REAL pronunciation is actually /krap/.

Roasting on an open fire

I don't know what the link is between chestnuts and trains. I'd never even eaten a roasted chestnut before, but when I saw this train-shaped shack on the street the other day, I just knew that it must be someone selling hot, roasted chestnuts. Instinctively, my spidey sense just knew that's what was inside. Why a train? Don't ask me.

So I bought a dozen, in a little paper cone. I choked down the first in its shell before realizing that you remove the outside before eating. Mmmmm.

But then I had that damn song stuck in my head for the rest of the evening.

Hallowe'en in Las Arenas

Excursión urbana: Artxanda

Under the weather

The fall cold is universal.

Days get shorter. The sky gets greyer. The streets get rainier. The temperature drops gradually until you have to stop fooling yourself-there will be no sunny Sundays like the one we had last week until spring.

And then you get sick. Like your friends, colleagues and everyone else on the metro.

As I blow my nose and stare out my 10th-floor window at the heavy grey clouds that have been emptying themselves over Bilbao for days now, I just keep repeating one thing over and over:

"At least it's not snowing..."

¡Truco o trato!

Everyone here knows what Halloween is. But not everyone shares the same attitude toward it.

Commerce has really lead the introduction of Halloween into Spain. The only places you see orange and black Halloween decorations are stores, and the most decorated stores are the big-boxes, the multinationals, and the shopping centre chain stores. These types of stores sell American products, pop culture, and consumption habits, and so they choose to promote Halloween, which is like all three of these things rolled into one. But though you'll find a couple of racks of kids' Halloween costumes and pumpkin banners and black cat stickers, it's still nothing that's celebrated as widely as it is in North America.

A lot of people resist it. "It's not our holiday, it's an American holiday," they say. "They can celebrate their holidays, and we'll celebrate ours."

But some bilbaínos see Halloween as an excuse to party; for those that do celebrate Halloween it's for adults only. I've seen posters for several club nights and costume parties in bars, and lots of people have house parties.

But because Halloween is relatively new here, and because people have learned its ins and outs from American pop culture, it's celebrated in a straighforward and earnest way. The costume repertoire consists of your typical scary being-witch, ghost, vampire, monster, grim reaper. There aren't too many ironic or tongue-in-cheek costumes. I got many puzzled reactions at last night's party for dressing up as the Urduliz Bridge Champion of 1990. (My costume consisted of a hat and a bridge trophy found in the depths of a storage closet in my apartment.)