We've had a relatively low number of visitors this year
compared with 2012 & 2013. This
means we miss our family and friends from home more than usual and our “American“
food supply is at an all-time low. This
has led me to begin making flour tortillas monthly to try and fill the gap. Needless to say we were completely thrilled
about welcoming my mom for a 10 day visit this month so we could spend time
together and stock up on some imported essentials.
We picked up my mom at the airport on the evening of
Thursday October 9th. After a
much delayed S-Bahn ride home (strangely typical of my Mom’s visits) we went to
our favorite Indian restaurant for a lovely outdoor dinner. Afterwards we went back home, packed our
bags, and went to bed so we could catch a few hours’ sleep before heading right
back to the airport for a 7:30 am flight to Spain. I still don’t know how my mom agreed to this
travel schedule without complaining. And
as is typical of my mom’s visits, we ran into S-Bahn problems just 2 stops
before our destination (the track was closed down!!). This left us stranded about 5 km from the
airport. We then had to chase down a taxi
to expensively complete our journey to make it to the airport in time.
After a luckily uneventful 2 plane trips, we finally arrived
in San Sebastian, Spain that afternoon and settled into our three-bedroom
apartment.
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| Left: switching planes in Madrid Right: Flying into San Sebastian |
Side note: We
chose to visit this city after hearing about how it is often considered to have
the best food in all of Europe. Most of
the places are tapa or pintxo style bars which offer small plates to eat in
sort of a “self-serve” fashion. It is
all very social and all very tasty. Therefore,
we spent most of our time in San Sebastian eating and when we were not eating
we were usually walking off the calories so we could prepare for our next
meal. I have to give my vegetarian
mother a lot of credit for playing along with our adventures.
Our first day took a bit of adjusting to Spanish
“time”. Our apartment was ready an hour
later than check in, the town goes on siesta mode in the afternoon, and sit-down
restaurants don’t open until 8 pm at the earliest. So we were kind of scratching our heads
during the first few hours upon arrival until we got out of our German mindset.
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| Left: Door to the City Center Legazpi 9 Right: Riding the tiny elevator to the third floor apartment |
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| Left: View from our apartment balcony Right: The perfect 'siesta room' as per Julie |
As most everything was closed for siesta, we started our San
Sebastian experience by going for a long walk along the famous La Concha beach
promenade. We quickly began to notice
the real charm of this little city. We
watched the waves come crashing at high-tide, though the strength of the waves didn’t
deter Julie and me from heading down some steps to feel the water temperature. Though Julie wasn’t as successful at making a
clean get away – her entire right foot, shoe and sock and all, ended up the
victim of a rogue wave. This meant I got
to walk around with her sock drying on my backpack. The things I do out of love.
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| The aforementioned sock |
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| NOT the steps Julie and I walked down to touch the ocean |
After getting our fill of walking the beach and watching the
waves, we headed into Old Town for our first dinner at La Vina. Here we got our first taste of Basque tapas/pintxos: an octopus and olive oil dish (raised some
eyebrows but tasty), marinated artichoke and olives (amazing olives), an au
gratin potato thing (very, very good), and a small piece of baked fish. For dinner we ate battered monk fish and
their famous “burnt cheese cake” (very good, but uncooked in the middle to our
disappointment). It was all more than enough
to put us to sleep back at the apartment.
We started out day two with a beautiful hike up Mount Urgull
overlooking the city and cove. We got
some great photos from up high of the various San Sebastian beaches. Everything was great except for stepping in
dog poo along the way. At least I had my
shoes on though unlike someone else later on our adventures...
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| Heading up to Monte Urgull through Old Town |
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| Zurriola Beach |
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| La Concha beach |
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| Smiling through the smell of dog poo on my shoe |
We walked back through Old Town for a late lunch. This area has one of the densest collections
of bars/restaurants/shops I have ever seen and all of which were full to
capacity. The city was so full of life
and energy it was amazing – and it wasn’t even high season. We made our first attempt to eat at Bar Nestor
– a place recommended in the guidebooks for having a particular steak we were
looking forward to trying (txuleta).
However, we quickly realized we were late to the lunch party and all of
the bars/pintxo places were over-filled and spilling people out into the
streets. The steak at Bar Nestor would
have to wait. Instead we stumbled into a
sit-down Italian restaurant, Raviolina, which turned out to be a very nice
surprise. We ate ravioli and pizza,
which probably sounds very boring, however it might have been the best food we
ate there (especially if you wanted a consensus from all three of us).
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| The special of the day was also delicious |
Following Spanish protocol we went back to the hotel for a siesta. In the evening we walked along the smaller beach
(Zurriola) and watched the hundreds of surfers trying to take advantage of the
high-tide. Or if you are Julie, you took
photos of every cute dog playing on the beach.
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| Just a selection of the random dogs that we now have photos of |
Later that evening, Julie and I ventured for some night time
photos. We specifically headed back to
the harbor area to recreate a photo we took earlier in the day to try to see
how extreme the tides were. We ended the
evening with drinks at an outdoor bar and counted the number of white fluffy
dogs that went past us.
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| Low tide vs high tide |
Hoping to beat the crowds to lunch this time, we got a slow
start on Sunday and tried to stake a claim at Bar Nestor at 11 when it
opens. This was a really bad idea on my
part. We killed about an hour walking
around in the heat only to have my plan fail because they don’t serve steak
until 1 p.m. So we kind of wasted the
morning on the prospect of eating a steak that just wasn’t meant to be. At least the sunshine gave us a few nice
photos of the Old Town.
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| Left: Iglesia de Santa Maria Right: Plaza de la Constitución |
After abandoning the idea of eating at Bar Nestor completely,
we took the bus to the other end of the beach.
Here we took the funicular to the top of Monte Igueldo where we enjoyed
the spectacular views from the other side of San Sebastian.
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| Our various modes of transit |
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| Ondarreta beach |
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| Me not cooperating with Julie's photo shoot |
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| Everyone cooperating |
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| View of Mount Urgull and La Concha beach |
On the way down we stopped by the El Peine del Viento - sculptures
built into the ocean side rocks. Here it
started to sprinkle on us, but it quickly cleared up on our beach so we spent
the afternoon playing in the sand and watching rainbows. The water was surprisingly warm, so I didn’t
miss my chance to go swimming before heading back to the apartment.
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| El Peine del Viento |
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| Ondarreta beach |
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| Of course if there is a dog by Julie, we have a photo of it |
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| One of our sand creations - writing San Sebastian in 3D letters |
We did our one pre-planned activity Sunday evening- we got
Basqued at Let’s Get Basqued! We all had
so much fun dressing up and posing for photos – even my skeptical mother who
was unsuccessful at convincing us to do this without her. We rewarded her cooperation by going back for
some more amazing food at Raviolina.
On Monday we spent more time eating, shopping, and at the
beach. We started by finally doing some
Pintxos bar-hopping. I can’t really
remember every dish we ate, but there was definitely some mighty tasty chorizo
and tuna stuffed red peppers along the way.
We ended our pintxos bar-hopping at the famous pintxos bar - Churreria Chocolateria. Ok – this isn’t a pintxos restaurant or a bar…
it is a place serving churros and chocolate – two of Julie’s weaknesses that
combined become an irresistible force for her.
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| Left: Casa Bartolo pintxos Middle and Right: Bar Sport pintxos |
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| A very happy girl |
Later at the beach it was Julie’s turn to step in dog-poo,
only I feel so bad for her because she was barefoot! I think she was surprised how soft and extra
sticky the sand was between her toes until the absolute disgust of the truth
hit her. Thankfully the ocean was not
far away to help wash it off and my mom was not far behind with a camera to
document the scene. The children of
Germany would never stand a chance in San Sebastian (see old blog post).
Julie and I failed once again trying to go to dinner at La Madame
at 6:30 p.m. (the website said they open at 6) only to realize they actually
start serving dinner at 8:30 p.m. Oh –
and it was their Indian food night (which is normally awesome for us, but not
when we specifically are looking for a Basque restaurant). So we scratched that plan and started to live
life the San Sebastian way, spontaneously (maybe a bit harder for Julie than
me). We were just going to walk and see
where we ended up. Walking around we
quickly learned that any place that truly caught our eye (or stomach) wasn’t going
to give us food until 8:30pm. This led
us to pre-dinner drinks and tapas and a sun-down beach photography session.
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| Using a long exposure to capture a family - the kids are too fast to be seen clearly |
Once 8:30 hit, we found (without planning) a sit-down restaurant
which was chosen because they had our long-sought after steak on the menu - txuleta. It was absolutely delicious and well worth
the trouble to finally get it. Just as
we truly fell in harmony with San Sebastian, we were facing our last night in
the city.
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| Restaurant: Casa Urola Jatetxea |
Overall, I would rate San Sebastian as above average and
definitely worth going back to.
Everything we ate in San Sebastian was high quality, it is not very
expensive (relatively speaking), and it is just a lovely city to spend time in
walking around and experiencing a lively atmosphere. It is the kind of place where spontaneity is
more important than planning, a rule that would have been nice to know in
advance.
We flew back on Tuesday and my mom stayed in Munich through
Saturday. Julie and I worked during the
days while she did some sight-seeing.
She even gets credit for seeing two sights we have yet to see
ourselves: Linderhof castle and the art
museum, Neue Pinakothek (thanks Aunt Ellen for showing her the cultural side of
the city!). We spent the evenings eating
dinner at home together and watching the San Francisco Giants make it to the
World Series (and it hurts me to admit this).
Of course as she left on Saturday, the S-Bahn was on strike so we drove
her to the airport to say goodbye. I
don’t understand why the S-Bahn hates you Mom!
Thanks for coming Mom, it was so much fun having you
here. Watch out for dog-poo. And I’ll see if the authorities of the S-Bahn
can issue you an apology.
