We’re in Bilbao for next week’s total eclipse of the sun; today, we toured San Juan de Gaztelugatxe, Mundaka, and Guernica.

We’ve never watched Game of Thrones, but we were told that they’d used San Juan de Gaztelugatxe as “Dragonstone”; the climb to it certainly looked (and was) imposing.

After the climb, we were ready for lunch; a short drive to Mundaka and we were seated outside the Hotel El Puerto enjoying salads with delicious fresh tomatoes and local tuna.

Our final stop was Guernica, which was a sacred place to the Basque people because it housed the oak tree under which all significant government decisions were made. When the old oak tree died, they planted a new one – the most recent tree was preserved in a mausoleum after it died.

Of course, Guernica is known to most of the world as the site of a massive bombing raid and follow-up slaughter during the Spanish Civil War.

We returned to Bilbao exhausted and educated, just in time to meet our touring companions at the evening reception.

(With apologies to Clement Moore and to Simon and Garfunkel)

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled down for a long winter’s nap,

When out of our phones there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

It was the National Weather Service with a cheery greeting:

We hadn’t been planning to travel until much later in the day, so the warning was superfluous.

Eventually, we drifted back to sleep.

When we got up intentionally this morning, I looked for a way to disable such warnings in the future, and found it (at least for iPhones). Go to Settings/Notifications, scroll almost all the way down to “Enhanced Safety Alerts” (below all the apps and just above “Government Alerts”), click, and turn off “Imminent Threat Alerts”. You can read the full details from Apple.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!