Okay, back at the blog! Please excuse the hiatus.

When I left off, we were just tucking in for our last night in Munich.

We’d had the best day ever in Tegernsee, but unfortunately, we were up pretty late because we didn’t time the busses and trains very well to get home.

Pair that with our 8:30am flight to San Sebastian, and it meant that we were capital-T Tired in the morning.

We basically zombied to the airport, where I bought a super dense pastry that seemed promising but was not all that tasty (way too sweet).

We did get some good mountain views on the flight.

San Sebastian doesn’t have a giant airport nearby, so we saved some cash by flying into Bilbao. Planning this part of the trip was stressful, because I really wanted to explore both Bilbao (on the west side of San Sebastian) and the French town of Biarritz (on the east side). In the end, though, it seemed more trouble than it was worth to split the time up, so we hopped straight from the airport to a San Sebastian transfer bus.

We met our Airbnb host, Lukas, at the train station and he walked us to our stay. He was trying to find an electrical engineering job (Sean bonded with him over this) after deciding to take a break from acting and modeling. (He had pretty crazy blue/ teal eyes! Definitely fit the bill, hahahaha…..)

The architecture in the area was very cool. Kind of French, kind of like Barcelona. Lots of stone and intricate carvings, and most of the buildings were about six stories high.

I think I talked about this already, but I really do think my days of flying super early (especially if I’m with Sean) are behind me. When I’m on my own, at least I can force myself into bed, but having Sean to chat with in the evenings (and as a safety man/ body guard so I don’t feel pressured to get home before dark) mean it’s way too easy to stay up later! I can also just suffer by myself and push through when I’m alone, whereas with a travel buddy, somehow I’m both way more guilty about my travel companion being tired and also somehow feel way more empowered to be tired and lazy myself… It’s not a great combo!

All this to say, once Lukas showed us our room, I went horizontal and didn’t resurface for about three hours. Sorry, Sean!

Once I was somewhat revived but still very tired), our first stop was food. San Sebastian is in Basque country, a wild little area on the border of France and Spain that has its own language, culture, and history. Somehow, the Basque language is a “language isolate,” meaning it has no linguistic cousins or ties to other languages. Very strange! How does that even happen? Everyone on this side of the border speaks Spanish and Basque, and presumably everyone on the French side speaks Basque and French.

One of the big food themes in Basque territory are pintxos (pronounced pinchos), little small plate snacks or appetizers. Our favorites (and the most common type) were just a healthy slice of bread with various toppings. Basically, you just walk up to the counter, point out the ones you want, and then eat at the counter or take your plates back to your seat. I quickly discovered that anything with soft cheese or grilled onions was usually going to be my favorite at any given spot.

After the pintxos pick-me-up, we explored the nearby cathedral and some nearby parks.

I always get excited when I see swans!

Once we were in the center of town, all the streets were lined with shops, and I anticipated some possible shopping excursions.

For now, though, more food! Empanadas!

We got the chocolate banana (yum!) and I think the other one was either ham and cheese or chicken curry. Can’t quite remember.

Next, we walked down to explore the beaches. Sean was super excited about being here because 1) he had some kind of pull toward Spain, and 2) he wanted to go surfing.

There were so many bodies in the water! Dozens and dozens of surfers catching pretty big waves! It looked super overwhelming and crowded, but obviously they were probably all pros. The whole beach area had a super content, relaxed, and joyful vibe. Sean was digging the feel of this city already.

There were lots of people (and unsupervised kids!) playing volleyball and lounging around (often topless). There were also several groups playing some kind of ping-pong type game, but just keeping the ball volleying between paddles without a net or anything. They’d even dive into the sand sometimes. We took notes and considered buying a set of paddles ourselves to try.

Somewhere in the last day or two, I must have sat on my sunglasses, so once we left the beach, we had to stop in a little shop to get me a replacement pair, and I got super distracted by all the trinkets.

I was also tempted by the Basque cheesecake, but we weren’t hungry yet!

And then, ever distractible as I am, I found a Flying Tiger (my old favorite store) and had to do a lap!

We wandered through some more parks and eventually ended up in old town. There were Basque flags hanging off the buildings, and there was a marching band playing somewhere nearby. There were also lots of high school or college-aged kids in some kind of uniform gathering, dancing, and partying near the band. We thought about investigating, but we assumed it was something like a high school graduation party, so we decided to stay out of it.

There were some more pretty churches and cathedrals nearby that we explored.

And by then, we were right in the heart of old town, at the intersection of three different highly-rated and recommended pintxos places.

These places were hopping, and there were obviously no tables available in any of them. We actually putzed around for quite a while trying to figure out what to do, wandering in and out of the restaurants and trying (and failing) to get the attention of one of the bartenders. But then we heard a big commotion outside, so we wandered out to find that big marching band headed our way from down the street.

The band led the way, and all of the crowd stayed back at the other end, bouncing in anticipation. Then, at some signal in the song, they all rushed forward, singing and dancing, with confused and happy tourists trickling in behind them. It was quite a show!

We finally managed to the get the attention of a bartender to order a cerveza, a sangria (yum!) and a few pintxos. Then we brought them outside to eat on the steps. Delicioso!

If you know me, you know I was seriously smashed after that one sangria, bahahaha.

We snuck our way into another of the crowded restaurants for a couple more pintxos. I was super intrigued by one that “appeared” to be some kind of custard, but I was worried about the name, “crema de foie.” I knew “foie” was very likely related to “foie gras,” aka, duck liver. But I took a chance!

And in fact, it was liver, bahahaha.

It wasn’t bad, but it was so stinking rich that we could only eat a few bites. This restaurant definitely had some more outlandish pintxos compared to the rest of the places we’d seen so far. (Lots of sea urchins!)

Once full and properly tipsy, we continued our journey around the old town area and ended up near the water.

To our surprise, there was a full-on concert going on just right on the street by the waterfront. At first, I couldn’t tell if it was live, but it was live, all right, and the scene was poppin’!

Sean went into the throng of the crowd first while I stayed up above to view the mesmerizing line dance everybody seemed to know.

The music was so interesting! It was clearly Basque/ local music, but it was a very strong Celtic lilt to it. It basically sounded like Celtic music, but a little heavier and with Basque or Spanish lyrics there everybody in the crowd knew but us.

I joined Sean right behind the mixer, and he snuck off to find us some libations.

When he returned to me, he said, “That was crazy. There are like a dozen fifteen-year old girls just trying to get people alcohol as fast as possible. This sangria was like two euros!”

I’ll never complain about cheap sangria!

I took a picture of this little crab symbol because it was on the little bandanas all of the uniformed kids were wearing. I figured that was our best bet at figuring out what the heck was going on here.

Sean was in heaven and just about ready to move to San Sebastian. “What is going on? Is this just like a normal Wednesday here?!”

Thanks to that genius photo, I was later able to research and find out that the celebration was for the port’s patron saint Carmen. We were there on the very last day of a week’s worth of parties, parades, dances, and fanfare. It took me a long time to find more details because so little was in English, but I finally found a full schedule of the previous week’s activities. The one I’m most sad to have missed was the “Giants and Big Heads,” parades where people dress as giants (using stilts) and “big heads,” where they literally just wear giant fake costume heads, hahaha. Sounds so fun! I was just glad we were able to catch some of the party. That concert was seriously so serendipitous!

We tried to join in on some of the easier dances and watched with big smiles on our faces when we couldn’t keep up. Sean was positively flabbergasted that all of these high schoolers knew so many of the moves. I guess there really isn’t an equivalent in the US! Maybe it’s like everybody doing “Soulja Boy” back in middle school, but with way more moves and to over a dozen different songs, hahaha.

Every few songs, a little dance troupe took the stage and performed what was so like Irish step dancing it was crazy. Sean and I just got more and more confused (and delighted) as the night went on.

We stayed and partied through another sangria and then finally decided we were ready for bed. We left the party in a daze and then made our way along the waterfront, admiring the super shallow waters and the rising tide as it slowly ate up some gorgeous sand art leftover from the day.

We found some street art that I couldn’t pass up. The artist was sitting and painting new tiles fresh in real-time (my favorite!), but Sean really needed to pee, so I was forced to make a quick decision! I spent the whole walk back to our Airbnb terrified that I had made the wrong decision, but when we got back and I opened it up, I was thrilled! I don’t think I could have really chosen wrong in the end. Just look at these gorgeous things!

In the morning, we meandered to one of the restaurants right on our street for breakfast. We were basically no-budget at this point (yeesh), so we splurged on fresh OJ, coffee, and toast. I got jamon, and Sean got avocado and lox. Yum!

When we ordered, I was trying to do so in Spanish, so I just walked up and started ordering, but the barista stopped me and said (in English), “HELLOO… HOW ARE YOU? THAT’S HOW WE START HERE. HELLOOO….”

Lol, okay! So apparently I was being rude! I made a mental note to at least say, “Hola” in the future…. Or to just make Sean order.

We savored our breakfast, but we didn’t have much time to waste. We had a surf lesson scheduled!

Unfortunately, we didn’t get a single photo of the whole experience. We didn’t want to leave any phones unattended on the beach, and it was a big hubbub of commotion the whole time.

We arrived at the surf school to find that our private lesson had been changed into a group lesson… Lol. At least that made it cheaper. There would be six of us with our teacher, Enico. We were given little shortsie wet suits, and I had to size down THREE TIMES until I was in a child large. Bahaha.

We then had to carry our boats about ten minutes (so far!) to the beach. We were with a Belgian mom and daughter, a German girl (who sounded like a kiwi), and a French girl.

We had a quick beach lesson, and then we hit the waves. I’m pretty sure mine was the only name Enico learned. “Elizabet!” he would call before beckoning me forward. Either my name was easy to remember, we were just vibing, or I was the worst one in the group.

Unfortunately, I was pretty overwhelmed from the get-go. I fell off my board in the wrong direction on my second try, so the board hit me in the back of the head and kept me under for a second. I was fine, obviously, but it definitely freaked me out!

I took long breaks after that, just hanging out in the water and waving everyone forward to cut me, waving off Enico’s frequent efforts at calling me to him. Wish that hadn’t have happened!

In the end, I only had four runs, but I got up to a knee on my third try and stood to my feet on my fourth. Definitely not as good as Hawaii, but I think it was pretty good given the circumstances! The surf was also much closer to the shore than it had been on our Hawaii lesson, so you didn’t have as long to ride the wave. Oh, well! This was much cheaper!

Sean fared better than me, catching several waves, and we were all exhausted when Enico called time. The German girl said she felt like she was now 99% salt water, which I felt was an accurate description.

After we returned our boards, Sean and I walked back to the beach for a little more swim time, but the water wasn’t nearly as warm without the wet suits!

We rinsed off at the surf school, and then we (somewhat impishly) sat at an outdoor table at a nearby restaurant.

Lunch was tasty, but it was also possibly the most beautiful meal I’d ever eaten!!!

We got a pesco sour (10/10), bao sandwiches (they were just okay), cheesey bread puffs (yummy), some kind of crazy sushi/poke/seafood dish with a creamy sauce poured over it (I was obsessed with this), and creme brulee (yummy).

After this (way too rich but totally worth it) lunch, we zombied back to our Airbnb for some real showers and a proper rest.

We didn’t resurface until 7:30, at which point we found some snacks.

We definitely over did-it. Way too much chocolate and sugar! The smoothie was yummy, though.

And then we made our way to one of the hills encasing the port, this one with a funicular (a like a mix between a train and an elevator) that led to a hilltop amusement park.

All of the rides were closed because we spent the good daylight hours in bed, but it still offered some pretty views!

Sean was bummed (okay, I was bummed, too) that we couldn’t go on the rides, because they actually looked super cute and fun. Especially the coaster and the little boat ride!

The park was at the very top of the hill, so we got a 360 degree view of the bay and the sunset.

There was some… Very interesting art around the park, haha.

We wandered the sleepy amusement park for a while before catching the very last ride back down the mountain. Pretty sure we did not have the energy to walk.

We meandered back towards our Airbnb and stopped for some pintxos and a cocktail on the way.

And that’s a wrap on Day Two of San Sebastian! One more to come!

Zaindu/ take care,

Lizzy-wa