San Sebastion

|Car ride to San Sebastion.

Well the day we went to San Sebastion started much like any other day, with a terrifying car ride in a country where you have only just figured out how to cross the street. Once we made it out of the large city it was mostly ok until we made it to the next city and had to navigate a labyrinth of traffic circles. This is a mostly unknown beast where I come from but know they are common in Spain.  After 6 hours of navigating Spanish roads alone we reached our destination and after taking the least direct bus ever created we found the approximate location of our hostel. Some 20 min of walking around landed us in the right building and we settled into the room.

Before meeting up with our friend Olatz we took a walk about 2 blocks from the hostel to the beach. It was beautiful the sun was just setting over the ocean. The air was still warm and the park we walked into looked magical. Pictures really don’t do the place justice it was truly a perfect moment. Once we met up with Olatz. She took us to the “elephant walk street” (basically where the university students go on pub crawls),  we had a tapas dinner at some of her favorite bars.

Our first full day was  spent at the beach, the sand was beautiful but the water was very cold and much to Erin’s dismay full of fish and shrimp.  Once we were done at the beach we met up with olatz for a walk around the sea wall ending in the new part of town and went out for Italian food.

The following day it was raining but this did not stop us from getting up and going out to the cider festival at 11:30 AM. For just 3.5 Euro we each got a glass and tickets for 10 samples…  they were generous samples.  After about 4 Erin and I were for sure feeling the effects of the drink. By the time we got to glass 7 we called it quits and had to hurry to meet Olatz and family for lunch and a trip to an old town. The town had a castle in it and for the most part resembled something like a historical village replica. This feeling that it was supposed to be fake was made even stranger by the realization that nope people lived in all of these buildings.  After walking around and exploring we went to a small street fair and Oihan went on a bunch of rides.

The next day Erin and I went to catch a glimpse of some of the big rowing competition before meeting Olatz and going to her house for lunch.  She made us paella and salad. It was very tasty, especially for Erin because the shrimp had no heads that had to be removed.  After lunch we went on a walking adventure to another town that looked like it was a fake replica. This one was huddled on the side of a big hill and we had to take a 5 minut boat ride across the harbor to get to it. The town had probably 5 cars in it and that is good because it only had one street with lights at all the parts wide enough for 2 cars to pass to indicate who could go and who had to wait. If you tried to get 2 cars down most of those roads bad things would happen at points it was hardly big enough to fit a car and a skinny person side by side.  Adding to the atmosphere of this place was the crazy steep moss covered staircases that didn’t seem to lead anywhere. 

Following this we had a relaxing day of wandering around and eating churros and chocolate, followed by the most amazing mushroom sandwiches ever. They were served by a grumpy fat woman and were perfectly garlic flavored and delicious.

Our last day in san sebastion found us at a very old amusement park. The way you get to this place is to go on a train car being pulled up the hill by a cable. It is rickety and slanted at an unbelievable angle.  The little guy went on a bunch of rides and some we even joined him for. The rollercoaster was particularly terrifying  as it had no seatbelts and just some guy sitting between the 2 cars with a hand break controlling the thing… yeah that doesn’t seem sketchy at all. Then we went on the little boat ride and almost sank.  Regardless of this the view of the harbor from the top of the hill was amazing and we had a wonderful last day.

Next onto Paris.