The Lowest Bitter

Greetings from a bitterly cold Bilbao. Remember when I said the Spanish went to war on the snow, well it ended like most Spanish wars, they were eventually overwhelmed. I'm supposed to be in Pamplona supping whiskey but the snow has led to all the roads being closed so I'm stuck here for the night.

My flight from Stansted was delayed. I began to make calculations about whether I was going to make the bus, I worked out that actually it would work perfectly as it would cut my waiting time and I'd comfortably make it. I hadn't taken into account that I was working on British time. I was calm and relaxed and reading the on flight magazine about reindeer farmers when they announced local time and I realised I was going to be lucky to make it. I rushed off the plane, got through passports, where the girl in front of me was physically sick, even ther bag collection was kind. I got to the bus, jumped on and it just sat there and sat there. I was five minutes late and the bus had gone. I thought this was a minor setback but the next one was in two and a half hours and was the last one. I got my ticket but it was cancelled.

Fortunately, Anna from school was due to be on the same bus so at least someone was here, her fluent Spanish has also been of great help. We even made some friends, a Japanese girl whose name I can't remember and a German called Kirsty. Anna phoned her boyfriend and Kirsty asked where he is from. He's from Normandy, and there was some confusion, when Kirsty asked where that was I stupidly said, "you know, North France, where D-day happened". I think I got away with it. In addition Anna's Polish, so add us all together and we could recreate a fair bit of WW2. Now we share hotel rooms, we're like an advert for Benneton.

It's unclear whether we will even make it back tomorrow so we have an early start to give ourselves the best chance.

I've not had the best of luck with snow recently. John, Hannah and myself tried to go sledding but without a sled it proved difficult. First we used a mat from John's car until a young family took pity on us and let us have a go on their sleds. We tried to buy one, Toys'r'us had sold out so we tried to improvise with a part of a sand pit but it transpires they expect you to buy the whole hippo. In the end we settled for a snow man but after 10 seconds decided it was far too cold and we retreated in an orderly fashion to a harvester.

I'm seriously bored of snow

love love love x