San Sebastian - Land of abundant pintxos & sand
Trip Start
Aug 28, 2010
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Trip End
Sep 18, 2010
San Sebastián - Donostia, Basque, Spain
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
We got in late around 9:30 pm. Since Pat knew the place pretty well, we were able to find our hostel. We chose a pretty good location for the hostel as it was right in the middle of the Old Town where all the pintxos bars were. We dropped off our backpacks and headed down to tryout the tapas. First place was right across from our hostel. The place was just packed. They had tapas lined up at the bar. You had to squeeze your way through the crowd to find just enough room to stand. We picked 4 tapas, 2 glasses wine all for a price of just 10 euros. Super cheap. We hopped on to the next tapas bar just a few steps away. These bars are everywhere in the Old Town. Pick the pintxos bars with the largest crowd and you usually get some quality tapas. We probably had visited about 4 bars the first night. I think the best tapas the first night was the one with a slice of mango, foie gras, dripped with some berry juice over a slice of baguette. It was a contrasting taste but the mango was so good. It was sorta cool that you can take your glass of wine outside close to the entrance way. Of course there are pros and cons of that.
The next day I took a bus to a neighboring city called Bilbao. It's slightly larger than San Sebastian as it's more industrial. My main visit to Bilbao is the Guggenheim museum. I've seen so many pictures of this Frank Gehry museum that it was a great opportunity to take photos of it since I was so close by. It's was sorta weird but when I got there the town was dead for middle of the afternoon on a Saturday. I guess it might have been the siesta. The only people around was tourists. I was there for only half day when I headed back to San Sebastian. The bus ride back and forth was great. Quite a scenic view of the countryside. I read there was a town between Bilbao and San Sebastian that was used as bombing practices by the Nazis. Franco at the time had a cozy relationship with Hitler. I guess Spain was considered part of the axis of evil back then. He told Hitler that his bombers can bomb this town as target practices even though there were residents living there. Not sure how many people had died b/c of that. Maybe that's one of the reasons the Basque area of Spain have always wanted to separate from Spain.
The last few days have been sunbathing on the beach with a bunch of backpackers from the hostel. It was interesting that I stayed in the same room who were all from Canada. 2 from Calgary, 1 from Winnipeg and 1 from T.O.
You know I was saying it was cool that you can drink on the streets? Well, it's not always the case if there's a lot of people on the streets. There was a rowing festival last night. It attracted a lot of people to the town where they were drinking on the streets. As the night progressed, the streets were starting to smell with the urine everywhere and there were broken glasses everywhere on the streets. It was the only bad impression I had of the town. Overall, San Sebastian is definitely an under-rated city which is probably how Pat would like it. There isn't much industry in this town except for tourism. You have the 2 beaches close by to keep everyone busy during the day. Then there is the pintxos bars at night you jump from bar to bar. It has sorta has the Honolulu vibe which has the great weather and Diamond Head in the background. Plus they actually speak english and french here too. Definitely a cool place to do a stag or honeymoon.
I agree with one of my friends. I'm starting to have a craving for asian food. Especially eating tapas the last few days...all I want is a nice steak...preferably from Alberta.
Next stop will be Paris. C'est bon!
Tri
