2019 Euro Trip – San Sebastian, Spain
Next up is San Sebastian Spain, just over the border from France, on the coast and in the heart of Basque county. If you’re a fan of Rick Steves, you’ll know that this is where he makes his headquarters for adventures in the region. This city of San Sebastian must be seen, gorgeous architecture in the old city, beach waterfront with surfers, great bars and food, friendly dogs everywhere happy for an ear scratch, people stylishly dressed, but man so much smoking. Gotta take the good with the bad. The old town apparently has the highest concentration of bars in the world. Walking the streets there, I can believe it.
The trip from Bayonne to San Sebastian is so short that we decided to take a bus and not burn a calendar day on our Eurail pass. Getting to the bus station and on the bus was of course an adventure. The hotel front desk called for a taxi and he arrived with â¬7.40 already showing on the meter. He said that he came from the train station and we had to pay for his time to drive to the hotel. I mentioned that’s not my problem buddy. He grunted back something in French. He got us to the bus station and then for some reason wanted to charge more than was displayed on the meter. I gave him exactly what it said on the meter and he lost his shit, calling me a “stupid boy”. Well, thanks for calling me a boy, makes me feel younger, you old man. As we walked away from him I yelled a Quebec insult from the depths of my memory “Mange la merde tabernac!” and then finished up with an improvised “Eat my cheese!”, admittedly not my finest work but the best I could come up with at the time. Fucking taxi drivers everywhere on the planet are fucking fuckers. This is one of my big pet peeves and I’m proved right 99% of the time. Don’t even get me started on Bangkok taxi drivers…
A bus rolled up at our scheduled time, but it didn’t have the number or route lit up on the front sign. Ugh. After I confirmed with the driver that this was our bus we climbed inside, only to find a young woman and an old woman sitting in our assigned seats. When I booked the tickets online, I specifically chose the two seats in the front row so we could get a good view for the trip. I pointed out that they were in our seats but they didn’t seem to care. Since I was blocking the aisle waiting for them to move, the bus driver looked at my ticket and told the women in French to move. The young woman just moved to the opposite side of the row with no care about her real seat, and the old woman moved about 4 rows back, grumbling the whole time. She then came forward again and said she left her water bottle so I reached under the seat and handed it to her with a big smile.
We pulled out and the driver did a great job of maneuvering the huge bus through the narrow streets while playing with his phone in one hand and the other on the steering wheel. Jeez. Just over the border into Spain we pulled into a side-of-the-highway rest-stop restaurant and the driver announced we were here for 30 minutes. Ugh, how about just get us to where we paid to go? While inside I discovered that my French SIM card was International for phone calls but not Internet! Damn! I thought laws were written a few years ago to stop this crap. For our few days in Spain I’m going to rely on hotel and restaurant WiFi and offline Google Maps, not wasting more money on bad Internet service via a Spanish SIM card.
We finally pulled into the bus station in San Sebastian and got a nice taxi to the office of the apartment rental place. Jim signed the papers and we were given the keys. We had initially been told we couldn’t move in until 4 pm so we planned to leave our luggage at the office and walk around for a few hours, but the lady said it’s OK we can move in now, so off we go.
We followed her “12 minutes walk” directions and ended up one beautiful street short of the beautiful bridge over the beautiful river in the beautiful sunshine. There was a gathering of Ferraris and other classic cars as we walked past. We found the apartment, it’s a 1 bedroom flat with a pullout couch in the living room, nice bathroom and kitchen and windows that overlook a bustling pedestrian cafe area in the old town, a perfect location for our desire to walk around, drink and eat for the next 3 days.
We walked out and found a tiny tapas bar, or pintxos (literally, toothpick food) in the Basque language, pronounced peenchos. Pintxos bars are set up with a long countertop, where they place many plates of small bites food. You pay by the piece and as you eat your way through the offerings the tradition is to just drop your used paper napkins on the floor. As you walk down the tiny streets in the old town, the sides are lined with dozens of pintxos bars. We picked one at random but my only non-meat, non-onion choice was a tasteless plate of two large sauteed mushrooms, which was not great. We kept walking to find a bar showing the Formula 1 Barcelona race Qualifying session and finally found one with a nice bartender who put it on for us. The only other customer was a nice old Spanish man with one tooth who seemed a bit on the Alzheimer’s side. We offered him a glass of beer or wine but he declined with a smile and some words in Basque. I found a candy shop across the street and showed the owner a picture on my phone of a blue bag of “Cool American” Doritos, but while he had about 8 other flavours, no Cool American! My search continues. I compromised with two big pieces of black licorice.
We walked just a bit further and found a sitdown pintxos restaurant with a stunning variety of food and I could eat nearly everything. I had two shrimp+crab on bread, a cheesy quiche thing and a beer from Barcelona. They were closing at 4:30 pm for the obligatory late afternoon break, so we ate quickly. The ladies running the place were very friendly and helpful to us. It’s our first day in Spain and we’re trying to speak our Spanish, but under pressure our brains were wired for a little bit of recent French and mother tongue English with a little bit of Thai mixed in so we end up making a mess of most conversations. I think another day of immersion will help bring the Spanish to the front.
We walked around the narrow streets of the old city, watching the ebb and flow of people hitting the bars and pintxos places through the day. Some places are packed elbow to elbow, some empty. We went into a dark bar to find ourselves the only customers for the very nice Ukrainian bartender. She said the place is empty until about midnight, then it’s heaving until about 4am. Jim got her to play some good music on her Spotify setup and we had a good conversation over my Macallan 15 and Jim’s rum and lemon. Turns out she has relatives that live in Brandon Manitoba of all places!
Breakfast of strawberries and bananas and Diet Coke in the morning. Walked to the sprawling waterfront area and went through the aquarium with very nice displays but lots of out of control screaming children. Had lunch at a restaurant right outside the aquarium, overpriced and not very good. Walked all over the old town, then home for a nap. We walked back into town for dinner and found a permanently-docked ship acting as a bar, and tonight was salsa dancing night. Watched, but didn’t participate while sipping on more Macallan.
The next morning watched Game of Thrones episode 5 where Dany goes all Mad Queen on King’s Landing. Oh sorry, Spoiler Alert!
We walked to the train station to get the stupid mandatory reservation for the train tomorrow. We told the ticket man we wanted to go to Bilbao, and he smiled and said it’s an â¬17 fee, you should just take the bus it’s faster and the same price! I said we already bought our Eurail passes and we want to take the train and he grudgingly took our money for the ticket.
San Sebastian is definitely a must-see in the region, for the architecture and food and great old town.
Next up, Bilbao Spain.
