San Sebastián

Driving through the hills into San Sebastian the weather changed from sunny and hot to grey and raining. Fantastic news as we were heading to a beachside town.
Just when I was starting to get a tan, it starts bloody raining.
Our guide on the bus told us all about the amazing food culture of San Sebastian and invited us all to meet her for a pinxos (tapas) crawl later that night. No one really seemed into it, but we felt sorry for her and agreed to come along to taste the best bits of San Sebastian.

When we found the hostel no one was answering the door. Not a great sign.

I called the number on the booking form and "Ernie" told me he would be right there.. He ran from the other property and was covered in sweat and puffing when he arrived.

Ernie was crazy, in a good entertaining way. He told us all the best spots to see around town, I made the mistake of mentioning the Jesus statue on top of one of the hills.
"no, don't go see that - Jesus has been through enough"
He told us all about his theories on religion, immaculate conception and communism - note to self: don't mention the Jesus statue to Ernie.

Whilst trying to interpret Ernie's wifi password instructions and surfboard hire posters on the wall we met Maz, a girl from Perth traveling on her own. We hit it off and invited her to the pinxos crawl.

Whilst waiting for the guide to start the pinxos crawl we had a drink at Atari, it didn't look like she was showing up so we got some food and thought we would start our own tour (having no idea where to go).
Sam had beef cheek was apparently amazing and I had a little prawn thingy which was delicious.

The guide and the rest of the bus finally showed up, turns out everyone wanted to come so she ditched us. Nice one..
We joined to group and headed to the next stop a mussel bar that had the best seafood I'd ever tasted.
The floor was littered with mussel shells because apparently its unhygienic to leave them on your plate. I'd think it's probably not very hygienic to throw bits of shellfish on the floor but that's just me..
This is where I tried kalimotxo for the first time, a drink made up of half red wine, half coca cola. It's delicious and refreshing and unfortunately really easy to drink, which is a big problem when red wine is involved.

The next place had traditional Spanish cider - it's basically stinky apple juice, which is not delicious.. unless you like that kind of thing.

The guide came and told us we were off to the next place (which had two for one drinks) but we still hadn't finished our drinks so she said she would come back for us. But she never did. So we found our own (weird) two for one place.

We ended up going back to the first tapas bar for more drinks, kalimotxo, sangria, beer etc. It was a great night, filled with new friends and plenty of food.

The next day we spent our day eating around the town trying out different Pinxos and exploring the town. These people love their dogs, and so do we. I'm quite sure I looked like a mental patient every time I saw a Pug or a French Bulldog - but I'm ok with that.

San Sebastian is a really cool beachside town.We stayed in the Old Town, full of beautiful old buildings and churches, close to the surf beach.

The surf beach is famous, although looking at the waves we couldn't really see why.

Sam went surfing with Ernie later that evening when the waves picked up. There were so many people out I'm surprised that no one got run over.

With no sun out at the beach I explored the shops, they had the usual H & M, Zara etc. and some little boutiques. But nothing too special, I thought San Seb was meant to be full of wanky types who dressed only in white and pay far too much for quality items.. Disappointing.

We caught up with Maz and some other girls on our last night and went back to the mussel bar because it was that good. We ended the night with drinks at a bar near where we were staying. We left the girls around 11 because we had to catch the bus the next day.

San Sebastian was partying hard that night, the Spanish tend to go out from midnight to about 7am, which is a coincidence because that's exactly when I planned to be asleep. Unfortunately the party on the street and the sleeping couldn't happen at the same time.

But that's ok because our next stop was Paris.