Sunday 10.24.2010


San Sebastian / Donostia


The plan is to describe the first three-fourths of our day in one paragraph and then move on to the interesting stuff. It is our last morning in France and we leave it like we found it, with gray skies and a drizzle. We grab a bit of breakfast, chat with Ben over coffee, get packed and are on our way out as Phil and Amanda make their appearance for a couple hellos and goodbyes. Our route takes us back through Toulouse continuing west through Wisconsin-like rolling farmland. We will fire our route planner if we ever find him because we should have done Carcassonne after Arles which would have pared about five hours off our total driving time of the last week. We'll chalk it up to more sight seeing. We do the McToilet/McDonalds stop (absolutely the only thing open on Sunday afternoon in all of France) and then turn south to the coastal towns of Bayonne and Biarritz. We are moving into the French Basque regions and the houses turn from earthy stone colors to white stucco with deep shades of red, blue and green trim. End of first paragraph, end of France.


(Special to note to our grandson: Au revoir Republique Francaise et merci beaucoup, Monsieur Devin, pour l’usage de le dictionnaire Francaise!)

San Sebastian sits on the northern Atlantic coast of Spain only a few miles from the French border. This is in the heart of Basque country, a new culture and new adventure for us. Our only encounter with Basques in the past has been watching Jai Alai in Florida and, of course, through the news stories of the battle for Basque independence. It reminds us of the resurgence of the Irish culture and language that is mixed with the danger of the bomb-throwing extremists.

Our hostess at our hotel (actually a Pension) in the center of San Sebastian couldn't be farther from the extreme fringe, a charming and energetic lady who speaks about four words of English. Mary is guarding the car in a no parking zone while our hostess explains that John should find a place to park on the street (free on Sunday), and the person who speaks English (her daughter) will be along later to give us further instructions. After about six loops around the neighborhood a place opens up directly across the street from our front door, so amidst shouts and horns we make a move and snare it. Our driving time in France was well spent. After getting back to the reception area our hostess whips out the maps and plans our next two days in detail for us starting with tapas tonight. The process takes about fifteen minutes and all three of us know exactly what was said. John started the conversation with "oui, oui, oui" and about halfway through switched to "si, si, si" and no one noticed.

After a couple hours break we are determined to immediately get on "Spain" time and set out for tapas and wine at about 8:30. English speaking daughter and boss, Leira (sort of pronounced "Lady") is now on the front desk and in Binghamton New York University English re-welcomes us and we get into the parking conversation. While the car is well situated tonight, she thinks (with Mama in her ear) that Sunday night would be a much easier time to move to a parking area that will be free throughout our stay and perhaps we should move it now. She pulls out the map, starts drawing, asks if we have GPS (Mama is also drawing), assures us that it isn't as far as it looks, points out the stadium we will pass, says it is only seven, maybe ten minutes away, tells us how to set the GPS and then tells us that to get back in seven or ten minutes we have to catch the #28 bus. Then she tells us, with a straight face, that the good news is that the #28 bus will take us right into the old city where all the tapas bars are. Strangely we buy into the whole program. It is dark and pouring rain, the traffic has tripled since this afternoon as the city comes alive late, there are flashing red and blue lights as people are crashing into each other, and yet Monique of the GPS steers us around the main fountain, skirts the stadium up the hill on the way out of town and eventually to the designated area, which is of course packed with cars slowly circling looking for the next open space. On our first pass a place opens up in front of us and we pull in encountering only one discouraged honk behind us. Must be the French license plates. A few minutes later we catch the #28 bus, take it to the old town and are on our Tapas crawl. An adventure a day.


The first bar on our list is closed which forces us to move across the street to another semi-crowded place to get a new plan. The Basques use their own language called Euskara that includes an array of t's, k's and x's in odd mixtures, and here tapas are called Pintxos (peen-chohs). The name of the city is Donostia in Euskara and is on every sign. Plates of Pintxos are strewn from one end of the bar to the other and we slowly learn that you order your drinks, ask for plates, and required utensils and then wander the bar taking some of these and some of those. You keep track of what you take, tell the bartender what you had before you leave, and he'll tell you how much you owe. Most of the ones we see are little open-faced sandwiches with a pile of delicacies on top of a slice of French bread, but a few are skewered, some are spooned, and hot ones are ordered from the menu on the wall. Our first encounter is two glasses of Crianza (red wine) and four pintxos which we shared for 12 euros. Everything was two euros including the glasses of wine. As is the recommended procedure we move along and stop at a couple more places, each with some things similar and some things different, but the prices remain remarkably low. Over the course of the evening we have crab salad, shrimp, garlic mushrooms, tuna, salmon, ham, cheeses, anchovies in various fashions, about a loaf of bread and plenty of wine for about the price of a meal for one. Tapas are big all over Spain, but apparently nobody does it quite like they do here. Fascinating.

It has stopped raining for our 15-minute walk back to our hotel and we have found another place we really like. Maybe all of Spain will be like this.

Today's weather: Rainy and cold all day. Low 44, high 55.