After a long week off and visiting lots of family and friends in the US, we returned to Spain and spent our first weekend in San Sebastian. We planned the trip a month ago with our roommates because it was the only weekend we could all do it together. Friday morning, we picked up the rental car and headed north. Our roommates decided that they wanted to do the driving so Iz and I napped and enjoyed not having to worry with driving and directions. The drive from Madrid to San Sebastian is full of incredible views. The Basque province of Spain is green and lush with valley after valley of trees and great scenery. At times, it felt like we were riding through the Swiss countryside.
When we arrived around mid afternoon, we spent a good half hour trying to track down our hostel. Our roommate Babak had booked it through a web site but had read that it had locations spread around the city. They confirmed this by calling us during our drive to tell us they would meet us in a central location to take us to the hostel. Unfortunately, San Sebastian is not driver friendly and there are lots of one-way streets that took us on several unintentional detours. We parked near the river and met up with our hostel guide near the town hall. He led us to an old house that had been redesigned and turned into a hippy hostel. The lady who runs it is in her 50’s and she has made every room as tacky as possible. Our room was divided into two halves. The front half had tall mirrors, lots of closet space, and a wooden rocking horse. The other half was painted a bright salmon color and the beds were decorated with bright sheets and comforters. It was an interesting place to stay.
When we felt settled, we left the hostel and made our first stop at the Whiskey Museum. Our other roommate, Sriroop, is an aficionado of whiskey so we promised him we'd stop and have a drink there. The inside was decorated in a traditional style with dark wood tables, wooden cabinets and wall panels, and wooden stools. It was dark and only lacked the smokiness a place like it seems to require. There were lots of old whiskey bottles hanging from ceiling racks and in showcases throughout the bar. It felt like we'd stepped back into the 1920's. After our quick drink, we made our way into the Old Town to acquaint ourselves with the pintxo culture of San Sebastian. The city is famous for its high concentration of Michelin Star restaurants per square mile but it also has a wonderful pintxo(pronounced pincho) culture. It's a play on the Spanish tapas culture. The basic idea is that you go to a bar where they have all their pintxos laid out and you put on your plate what you want and pay for each one, usually at a cost of 2 - 3 Euros each. After indulging ourselves a bit in two or three various pintxos bars, we went for a walk to alleviate the fullness in our bellies.
We stayed in the Old Town of San Sebastian for most of our walk. It is the core of the city and was once fortified by a large stone wall until 1863. Most of the buildings there were quite old and built of stone. We saw some popular places to eat like La Cueva, which is in a partial basement level of an old building. The town hall is a beautiful building made of yellow stone and it sits right on the edge of the harbor. In front of it is an amazingly beautiful garden. I imagine its quite a relaxed job to be the mayor of this town. We walked down to the port and sat around with the locals and tourists watching the sunset. It was a great way to end the day.
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