By the beard of Zeus

There was a long drive from Madrid to San Sebastian so we had to break it up with a stop in Burgos where we had some 1 euro boccidillos for lunch. I would tell Spain to please increase your prices to 2 euro for a meal and get out of debt, but this would probably incite riots as it impacts their way of life.

We made our way into San Sebastian and either google or Heidi gave some bad directions (lets say google did for the sake of the marriage) and we ended up being stopped by some polisia local. I thought "Oh noes another Spanish Inquisition", but they just informed us that we can't drive down the "zona peatonal". No fine because they weren't arsehole Australian police.

After checking in we were told that the only free parking was miles away on a hill in a residential area. We went and parked the car on the ridiculous hill amongst the ridiculously grandiose houses and apartments, then walked down along the beach promenade and had a gin and tonic(I'm a fan of these since Barcelona, its like a martini, but for daytime).

View from the carpark(this place should be good).

For dinner, we went out to the Parte Vieja (Old Town) and the place was buzzing already a bit after 7pm which is quite early for Spain to be buzzing. After walking around a few places and having some room temperature seafood pinxtos next to areas of the bar where you either get constantly bumped into or standing where they were bussing finished plates and glasses, I was kind of over it and wondering what the big deal was about San Sebastian.

One of the streets of the old town

I mean we had already had pinxtos for lunch with Dan Smith in Barcelona and that was awesome. It was fresh, not busy and you could enjoy them without someone pushing a plate of half finished pinxtos past you to the bar. Anyway we retired to a another quiet bar where there were for some reason a lot of Aussies. I guess sometimes you just want to watch the Olympics and have a quiet pint.

Thursday, we did a walk up the hills on the opposite end of town, past the Parte Vieja, to go up the winding roads to the statue of Christ. There's a few old battlements and a castle. I didn't get all the translations but Napoleon was mentioned and I think this was a key vantage point to hold back in the old days. 

Once we got up to the castle, just under the feet of the statue of Christ, there was some more breathtaking views to be seen incase your breath wasn't already taken from the hike up. There were a lot of Spanish people saying "hey Zeus" when we got up there, but I think they're all pretty bad at theology as the statue at the top was Christ, not Zeus...idiots.

What up Zeus?

Us ruining the view.

Later we took a walk to the other beach across the bridge "Playa de Zurriola", which the weather had taken a turn, it was really blowy, but walking across that bridge was amazing. The river was really tidal and you could see fish battling the currents on the changing tide in the clear water.

We went back home to research where we could get some decent food. My mate Ev had whatsapped me and said I must "find a tapas place at back end of old town, has sign Keller 18 out front, and jamon wrapped scallops the size of rib fillets" (Keller 18 is like on every sign because its the local beer) and that at "top end there's a red and black lighting modern tapas at the other end of old town shops and maccas". With these directions how could I go wrong. Anyways we came across this website www.todopintxos.com and drew all the bars we could into our tourist map and set out. 

N.B. Heidi's phone cannot eject SIM after she tried to get it out with a toothpick and my phone battery died in Barcelona so we've been living like savages when we're out and about, hence the tourist maps.

Who needs technology when you're a savage?

We nearly made it to 31 de Agosto, when I noticed that there was an ambient bar with red lighting which I thought Heidi would be interested in as you could barely see anything in there. Heidi describes this kind of thing as "ambiance". I said to the waiter in there "mesa por dos" and he answered back in English "sit where ever you want" because my Spanish is so terrible. We grabbed a spot at the bar and ordered from an English menu which was kind of comforting as it was "Nuevos Tapas" which basically meant new tapas or "not the same shit you've been eating all across this country for the past 3 weeks in every bar". Anyway I digress.

The menu in Basque lit in red and black I think this is where the name comes from.

The place was called "a Fuego Negro". This menu was awesome, all cooked to order. I  also spied a copy of "the bible" in a display case which meant this food was going to be top notch. There was cool hip hop playing too. We ordered rabbit with garlic, fried octopus and olive salad, olives with vermouth and ceviche with pomegranate foam. So good.

Ceviche with pomegranate foam

Olives with vermouth gel

Roast garlic bunny, the playboy thing was parmesan

Then we went up to La Cuchara de San Telmo, which was first on the list from todopinxtos. The menus again were Ingles thank god. (I have noticed that it's a lot easier to read French menus than Spanish despite coming over with no French. I think it's due to the French impact on cuisine. Goddam even cuisine sounds French.) Anyway, this place gets the worst vegetarian restaurant award. We had jamon wrapped maine scallops which are the size of rib medallions, ah this must be the other place Ev was on about. Also suckling pig, diced cuttlefish with venison snout(was yummy, connective tissue from land and sea together at last!) and slow cooked veal cheeks. Aw yeah. Also the jamon wrapped scallops took a while to come out so the nice bartender gave me a plate of pigs trotters which someone didn't claim because we looked like we needed more meat.

Scallops were like 5cm across, must source maine scallops when back home.
Why are we bothering with tiny ones?

We went around to check out a few more of the places but by this time we were really quite stuffed and couldn't be bothered dealing with the crowds so we just went to a quiet bar that didn't have pinxtos and watched Australia disappoint in the pool again.

Friday morning we did some shopping then went for a walk around La Concha bay to the edge of it. There's some metal sculptures drilled into the rocks there which were installed called "wind combs". I think the sculpturist also designed this tunnel that when there's a big swell creates a blowhole that comes out of the pavement nearby. Unfortunately it was low tide when we got there so we didn't get to see the blowholes in action.

The wind combs

After stopping for a coffee we went to A Fuego Negro again, because we're fatties and it's awesome. This time, amongst others like "frozen cheese with anchovies" (a whipped cream cheese semi-freddo type thing), we had a dessert which is called "regalize it" and is like a little pot leaf in soil. (We worked out later in Biarritz that regalize is Basque for dessert or something when we saw it on an icecream shop). I went for a swim after lunch as the sun was out and managed to catch a few waves, the swell was quite good, about 3ft.

When it was dinner time we went back to the jamon and scallop place before it was due to open and camped it out at the bar next door waiting for 8pm. Once it was open we got inside and secured a precious standing bar spot. This time the guy asked for my name when he took the order, I said Ryan, then got the que? back and tried spelling it in the spanish pronunciation but it was getting us nowhere so I said "Ryan" again and he said "wine?" and I was like yep that's fine much to the amusement of the 2 Aussies I was ordering next to. Anyway when our orders came out he yelled out WINE! and I was like SI! and there were many lols had.

Can you guess what we did afterwards? Aw yeah watching the olympics back at our favourite bar.

Anyway to summarise, I could easily live in San Sebastian at least during the summer months, its freaking awesome, has a lot of history and the people there are really nice.

San Sebastian is a pretty small place