San Sebastian - gorgeous beaches, delicious food, relaxing atmosphere - but very little to actually do. This suited me just fine as I just wanted to relax and the beautiful beach weather (26 degrees at the end of October...weird) meant we could stretch ourselves out on the fine yellow sand and absorb the relaxing warmth and harmful UV rays. The vista was as good as any you'd find in Hawaii, marred only occasionally by groups of naked, obese, middle aged men chatting. Skin hardened by the sun and tough as leather, they stood to allow the rays equal access to all parts of their bodies, save the small areas inadvertantly concealed by overhanging rolls of fat.
The San Sebastian highlights were - seeing Jules again after 11 months, lying on the beach, eating pastries, shopping, and the sun. Lowlights - customer service in Spain (uniformly abysmal, the waiters treat you as if you are something scraped off the bottom of a scummy barrell that's been sitting in the bottom of a damp cellar for 150 years), coffee with UHT milk and getting my hair cut. I hadn't cut it since last December and as I'd had such a brilliant haircut in Buenos Aires (Guille is a genius) I thought they'd do a better job in Spain than Ireland. They didn't. It's ok I guess, it doesn't look bad, but Guille gave my hair a certain je ne sais quoi that made it perfect even when I just got out of bed...I'll have to wait until I go back to BA before I can recapture that magic I guess.
We were staying in a pension in San Sebastian's old quarter, which, handily, is where all the bars are. We ate loads of pinxos (canapés basically) and drank plenty of cañas (beer) as we had no kitchen (glorious, glorious lack of facilities!). We must have looked like guiris (foreigners) as everyone was speaking to us in English! My friend Maria later told me it was because of the two telltale guiri signs: running shoes, and large bottles of water, both of which we had at any given moment.
We went on a day trip to Biarritz, which is basically just a French version of San Sebastian (better food and service, but more expensive). The whole Basque coast is incredibly beautiful, and the Basque language is funny (lots of "k"s and "x"s). Little Basque kids are so cute!
From San Sebastian to Bilbao, only for the morning to check out the Guggenheim. I love modern art and I was in my element checking out all the installations (one of which was made out of steam) and the building itself is a work of art. Bilbao looks clean and pretty, and it's a shame we didn't spend more than a few hours there, but we were anxious to get a couple of days in the capital city before I headed off to Roma and Jules left for London.
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