As I drove towards Bilbao the plains in Spain gave way to granite mountains. The scenery started changing and it was absolutely stunning! The language also changed as I entered The Basque Country. I was listening to some podcasts about the language and culture in País Basco. The language, also known as euskara is one of the oldest languages in continental Europe. Furthermore, it seems quite unrelated to anything else that is currently spoken, which deepens the mystery.
I reached Bilbao without incident but as I was trying to get my car into the narrow apart-hotel parking lot, I cut my tire on the curb. Fat American cars on narrow European roads. Go figure! I was worried that it would start losing air but I checked back in a few hours and it was still alright.
The apart-hotel was really nice and central. Plus, it was dog friendly – which for me during this trip was the most important thing. I had one night to spend in Bilbao so I decided that it would be spent doing a food tour.
I had booked a food tour for myself since I wanted to explore and eat as many pincho’s as possible. Pincho’s or pinxto’s are small snacks they eat in Northern Spain. Mostly served in bars and are basically similar to tapas. However, in the Basque country they are a frequent staple and come with lots of variations. I arrived at the meeting point for the food tour, and there was no one there. I waited for a while and after 20 minutes or so, I called the agency. They said that there was no tour today because of Easter break. (Easter was coming up in about a week)
I was super disappointed. But I had one night in Bilbao and I had to make the most of it! So I decided that I would research the best pinxto places and go by myself!
I found this amazing article about the best bars in Bilbao for pinxto’s and I followed the recommendations and the map in there. Of course, since I had already spent too much time outside the apart-hotel now, I had to go back and bring Leila with me. So off we went, Leila and I, on a self guided food tour in Bilbao! By the third or fourth stop I was absolutely stuffed. We made our way back to the apartment and decided to call it a night.
The next morning, Leila and I woke up early and went out for a walk. It had been raining overnight and the air smelled misty and cool. I was on the hunt for specialty coffee to shake off my grogginess. We went for a walk around the waterfront and saw the Guggenheim Museum. Then we went to have some coffee and pancakes. I met the owner of Cokooncafe in Bilbao and we had a nice chat about specialty coffee, the business, and of course how we need to educate the population about delicious food and coffee. (I know, how pretentious of us!)
After this, it was time to drive out. We had a long day ahead of us and Tesla doesn’t have any superchargers around the Bilbao area. I was slightly concerned about this since the car did not have enough juice to make it to the next supercharger. My phone was ready with the Recarga Publica app that would allow me to use Iberdrola chargers in Spain, but I hadn’t used it up until now so I wasn’t sure if it would work out. I had a charging location about 20 minutes out of Bilbao so I headed there.
Once there I plugged in the car and I managed to remotely start the charging through the app. Voila! The only difference was that the charger was of a lower capacity than what the app said so I needed to wait for a little longer. But I never mind taking strolls around quaint mountain towns with Leila so that’s what we did!
The drive to Paris was long (about 1000km in total) so it took all day and several charging stops. We stopped for eclairs just after we entered France. And then ran around together at various charging stops along the way. Road tripping with Leila is great fun! I stopped every few hours to charge the car and we would play fetch or just run around chasing each other. It was definitely a good time!
The weather was always changing between sunny and stormy so it was tiring driving for all those hours. Luckily the Autopilot function helped a lot so I wouldn’t get tired on the road. Leila for sure was wondering what this extremely long drive was all about.
I was really pumped about going to Paris though because I had booked a comedy show there and was going to perform. I was also going to see a few of my high school friends so it was looking like it would be a fun time for sure!
I did get flashed by a speed camera while driving through one of the cities in France. I hoped that since I had a foreign number plate they wouldn’t track me down for the fine. Spoiler Alert: They did. I got the fine in my mail a few weeks later. However, I had another flash in Germany later on this trip and never received that fine. You win some, you lose some.
As I entered Paris the fatigue totally hit me. I had been driving for over 10 hours. Luckily I didn’t have any sort of fixed itinerary so I decided I would spend a few days in Paris before moving on. My friend Rahul was in the process of moving to London so his house was missing a lot of furniture. His wife and son had already left for London. But the essentials were still there so we had a lot of fun! You don’t really need much to enjoy yourself when you’re in good company. We used to be on the basketball team together in high school so we go way back!
The past few years every time I visited Rahul we would hang out together with his wife as well. But this time we were just the two of us together, like back in the day. Honestly it felt really great! Leila would run around destroying the few shoes left in their house, we would go for dinners and drinks, and also to meet our other high school friend Anand. Honestly, it was like a mini-reunion and just what I needed. I would take long walks with Leila and like this I ended up spending more than a week in Paris.
During this time, there was actually a robbery in Rahul’s garage. Someone stole a car! Funny enough, his neighbors said: Oh there’s a Tesla parked in there, did the camera’s catch anything? Unfortunately, I didn’t have Sentry mode enabled since I didn’t have a power plug in the garage. Sentry mode on the Tesla is basically a security feature that combines motion detection, live camera recordings, and more to make sure that nothing shady is happening around the car. It does use a little bit of extra battery power but can monitor the car and surroundings pretty effectively. Alas, I didn’t have Sentry mode enabled so I couldn’t really help out.
At some point Rahul had to go back to London. He was still in the process of moving his belongings to their new place in London. So I decided to move on to Frankfurt. Honestly I was having such a good time with him, I could’ve stayed longer with him and Leila was for sure enjoying her Parisian adventure. One time Leila and I went to the mall at La Defense. I was walking around the mall with Leila and I had no idea that dogs were not allowed in there. A security guard came up to me and said something in rapid French. I couldn’t understand so I looked into space and was like “Ummm.. sorry?” and because I looked so blank the guard thought I was blind and started apologizing profusely because he thought Leila was my service dog. Well, I got away with that one!
So we started driving towards Frankfurt. It was a beautiful day and the drive wasn’t too long. I did get stopped for a random ‘customs check’ at a toll gate close to the German border. They were looking through my belongings and I felt that the check was racially motivated. It was also how they asked me to stand away from the car and three burly french customs officers kind of blocked my way. I didn’t enjoy that experience but I guess I did look like someone smuggling drugs from .. France into Germany? I’m not sure. Leila was pretty happy to wag at the evil customs officers though!
We made it to Frankfurt as the sun was going down and as always I checked for Pet Friendly hotels on the Booking.com app. Germany is incredibly pet friendly! During this trip I had got pretty comfortable with Tesla’s self driving function. It’s a great way to deal with highway fatigue. What I personally find most tiring about driving on highways is paying attention to the road for long unending hours. The autopilot on the Tesla really helps with this. Another thing I usually did was flip the car into autopilot and look for hotels for my next stop. I found a pretty good deal at the Crown Plaza in Frankfurt which happened to be dog friendly as well! My two criteria always were: dog friendly and free or affordable parking nearby. The Crown Plaza had both, and it was around €40 for a night.
Leila and I checked in and I had booked a spot at a comedy show in Frankfurt. So after I took her for a short walk and gave her dinner I made my way to the venue for the show. The show was at an interesting venue, an appliance store/restaurant – The Haier Lounge. I met a lot of nice people from Frankfurt and also the comedians were really friendly and welcoming. After the show we hung out at the waterfront and they told me stories of life in Frankfurt, how it was to work there, and how people there were really kind. What I found really interesting was that Frankfurt as a city gets a bad rap for being this boring financial and business center. They say the people are cold and unkind and all they care about is money. My impression was the opposite. It seemed like having at least some money gave people the life satisfaction to be kind and helpful. Frankfurt definitely looks like a wealthy city.
The next day, my friend Dushyant arrived from Berlin. He took a train down to spend the weekend together. It was also Holi, the Indian festival of colors. We decided to go for a walk and explore “old Frankfurt” during the day and then go to an Indian restaurant for dinner. The waitress at the restaurant asked us “white people spicy or Indian spicy”. We made the mistake of saying “Indian spicy”. She was south Indian and in the south people eat a lot more spice than in the north. So her definition of Indian spicy was a lot more spicier than ours. What we should have said was “somewhere in the middle”. However, the food was really good and we enjoyed ourselves!
The next morning we started our drive towards Berlin. It was a beautiful day so the drive was fun. We stopped to charge along the way and played fetch with Leila. This was actually the second time that Dushyant and I were roadtripping in a Tesla. The first time was back in 2018 when I had rented a Model S in Berlin and we drove down to Leipzig for a night.
We arrived in Berlin as the sun was going down. I always try to drive in a way that I arrive by sunset. Night driving is very boring and tedious since there are no landscapes to look at. I thought I would spend a week or so in Berlin and then decide the next step, but I ended up staying a lot longer than I had planned.
