A land of paradise and strikes
Trip Start
Jun 18, 2010
1
12
22
Trip End
Jul 17, 2010
San Sebastián - Donostia, Basque, Spain
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
We board the night train from Paris to San Sebastian at 11 pm. We climb onto the top bunks (with 2 below each of us…just a little high) in a couchette with 4 other people and no AC. We're supposed to stop at 8 am to transfer. Instead we are woken up at 6 am (7 hours on the train still) to find out we never actually went anywhere and we’re still in Paris. Surprise! So they have all of us get off the broken train, walk to a bus that takes us to another train station, and we are given a boxed breakfast and told it will be another 8 hours before we’re there. …
Day 11: Sweaty and exhausted we arrive in San Sebastian at 4 pm. It’s like paradise, the beach is right outside the station, the weather is amazing, and we can’t wait to get some real food. A shower and we’re off to try the famed pinxtos (Basque style tapas). On the way we see posters everywhere written in the Basque language that we don’t understand and a lot of shouting marching people. Looks like fun we think…wondering what they’re chanting for…and almost join in the march. Well we later learn after hours of wandering around looking for anything serving some kind of food to be open that it was a general strike. So all the restaurants, bars, stores, everything is closed. Only our second strike encounter in a week though, so we’re not doing too bad.
Luckily we found a tiny bar with no food but the football match on, and get to share in the excitement of watching Spain win. And thankfully we find another tiny bar off the beaten path that lets us in (though he keeps all the shades and the door closed so the strikers won’t paint bomb his bar) and we get to try the txakoli (a local sparkling wine…kind of like a cross between a cider and a beer) and some sardines, salmon, and other marinated fish served on chucks of bread along with fried squid, cheese and mushrooms.
Day 12: Since European strikes only last one day, we’re excited to get to try the art of txikiteo (bar hopping) For lunch we stop in a few bars and have tea and coffee with all kinds of tortilla (Spanish omelets), small fried concoctions, and different types of seafood and toppings on little slices of baguette. We’re not exactly sure what everything is, but it’s delicious. We’ve read that this is the place to come to for great food…and that’s very true if you come when people aren’t striking. Then it’s down to lay on the beach and eat some ice cream (we’ve never seen so many people eating ice cream anywhere…didn’t realize Spanish people liked it so much).
Dinner is the same as lunch, hopping from bar to bar sampling the amazing pinxtos and having tiny glasses of txakoli and cervazes (beer). We hang out with some Australians (and seriously…Aussies are everywhere…think they travel more than the rest of the world combined) who write down a bunch of places to go in Barcelona since they’ve just come from there.
Day 13: We store our luggage and head out for more relaxing on the beach between our last samplings of the food. We’ll miss this tiny coastal paradise where we never used a map, had to take a bus, taxi, or metro and could walk anywhere within 10 minutes. And we ran into the same Australians later, and saw most of the people who arrived on the same train…that’s how small it was. While we’d recommend for people to go there, we hope that most tourists stay away and don’t ruin this delightful place.
It’s on to Barcelona…staying at the Expo Hotel for the next 3 nights
