City Post: San Sebastian

San Sebastian! What can we even say? Neither of us wanted to leave this city. Its architecture is beautiful, its climate perfect for a European beach getaway, and the food was excellent all the way around.

We both love the beach, so we knew we just had to kick off San Sebastian with a beach trip in the morning. On the way in the night before. we'd read about the Tour de France coming through 2 hours before, and we were pretty bummed that they were starting about 2 hours away (using public transit). Lucky for us, stumbling upon things is apparently our strength, because they were going to ride right by the beach we were visiting! So after a few hours of laying on the beach watching the surfers (the water was WAY too cold for us, even in July), we took our spots along the race route to see the Tour de France ride through. Talk about something you never thought you'd get to see! It was so cool to see the cyclists coming through town (and funny to watch Jo take a promotional bag of candy to the face!).

After watching the Tour de France, we walked around the historic Old Town, had several pintxos, a couple of drinks, and enjoyed the sights. We both heard some Texas country music playing from somewhere, and lo and behold we came across La Fiesta del Color del Amor, a Christian festival sponsored in partnership by a church in Atlanta and a local church in San Sebastian. The hosts took time to explained the meaning behind the festival (they used a colored bracelet to tell the Story of Salvation) and put on a few line dances and activities for the local children.

The second day, we slept in a bit and made our way to the train station to reserve Eurail tickets (in Spain, you must reserve the tickets at a local station). Well, that didn't go as planned. We managed to get our tickets from Barcelona to Madrid and Madrid to Porto, Portugal somewhat easily, but we had zero luck getting out of Pamplona (our next stop) to Barcelona. We tried the busses, again to no avail. Then we tried BlaBlaCar, but a website error kept us from making a reservation. We resigned ourselves to paying for a full-price fare (instead of using our passes), but we FINALLY managed to get BlaBlaCar to work, and we managed to book our ride to Barcelona.

Exhausted from the almost 4 hours working on tickets, we made our way to hike Motako Gaztelua, a former fortress overlooking the harbour, to take out some of our frustrations on the trail. The museum at the top was closed on Tuesdays, but we still enjoyed the hike, views, and monuments after an irritating morning. We had lunch (again pinxtos) at 1813 tavern, then visited el Museo de San Telmo, a Basque history and culture museum. Most museums are free on Tuesdays (we learned), so it was especially worth our time. Most big ticket items were translated to English, but most of the display placards for individual artifacts were only in Spanish and Basque, so we only understood so much, but it was still cool to see the region's history told from their perspective, especially the traditional farming and sports. Then we were off to the beach and then back to our AirBnB. We had laundry to get ready for the next morning before heading off to Pamplona, and we knew we wouldn't be able to put it off until after San Fermin.

​Where we stayed: AirBnB just outside of town

Jo's Favourite: Tour de France

Jack's Favourite: Motako Gaztelua

Top Lesson Learned: Admin takes longer than you think! Laundry, booking reservations/tickets, keeping photos, videos, and blogs up to date...plan more time for this than you think!

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