san sebastian

Hi guys.

LUCKY LUCKY you.  Today I am going to tell you all about my long weekend in San Sebastian.  This happened in October but I felt like reminiscing.  Plus this long weekend thing is the single best thing about living in London.  I mean, when I take an hour and a half flight from Auckland I either end up in Dunedin (sorry Dunedin, I love you but you're no sexy exotic foreign food mecca) or somewhere in the Tasman Sea. An hour and a half from Gatwick gets you awesome. 

P and I spent four days in San Sebastian and pretty much ruined eating for the next month.  IT WAS WORTH IT.  San Sebastian (or Donostia, if you prefer) is also very pretty.  Sometimes we had to go for walks to burn off the food and we saw things like this:

AUTUMN SKY (I SWEAR I HAVE NOT FRIGGED WITH THE FILTERS) AND BOATS AND JEEBERS ON THE HILL.

RIVER RUNNING THROUGH TOWN, ABOUT 1 KM FROM THE SEA.  NO DEAD THINGS IN IT (c.f. MY WEE FRIEND THE THAMES)

P organised us accommodation in the Old Quarter of town and I was designated as chief map reader/understander of Mandy, our sat nav (Mandy's a Garmin and bought solely because of those effing awesome ads featuring giant Swedish hands and tiny mandolins.  It is just about the only ad that does not aggravate P's early on-set oldmanrage - he has VERY strong feelings about advertisements).  Sadly this ended up fairly stabby because the Old Quarter is not intended for vehicles other than tiny scooters and odd tiny fish delivery vans.  We almost totalled the rental car on a bollard and effed any chance we had at marital harmony. 

Apart from being a serious cause of relationship angst, the Old Quarter is awesome.  It is full of tasty, tasty pintxos bars with delicious things on sticks in bars with plenty of old dudes.  My thrifted 50p Spanish phrasebook was not quite as useful as we thought it would be, given the Basque speak Basque which is very LOGICAL.  That's some good travel homework right there, no? And demonstrates a stunning lack of current-ish affairs knowledge.  Once you get the 'tx' pronounciation only slightly mangled (we think it's 'ch' which seemed to generally work), you're good to go to eat things.  Pintxos are effing awesome. 

San Sebastian is also a wankery paradise because allegedly it has the most Michelin stars per head of population.  I mean that in the nicest way possible because we ate at some nice places that did not feel like they were patronised solely by tossers (London, I'm looking at you: there seems to be a direct correlation between Michelin stars and wanky patrons there).  Like I've said before, I don't do food blogging because it makes me feel like an asshole so apply within to discover the restaurants we sampled.*

NOT A RESTAURANT.  MORE BOATS.

We drove along the salty, surprisingly green coastline to get back to the airport at Santander and stopped in Bilbao on the way.  Bilbao has unbelievable architecture and the Guggenheim was mindblowing just from the outside.



BUILDING AND SKY, BILBAO. MOST OBVIOUS CAPTION EVAR. 



BALLS OUTSIDE THE FRANK GEHRY DESIGNED GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, BILBAO. IN MY *cough* EXTENSIVE SEARCH I CANNOT FIND THE CORRECT CREDIT FOR THIS PIECE, BUT THE PHOTO IS MINE. PLZ TO SAY IF YOU KNOW IT.

ME AND JEFF KOONS' PUPPY.  I THOUGHT IT WAS A CAT, I LIKED IT ANYWAY

Wiki just told me an awesome story about the Puppy - apparently, it was the subject of a explosives plot involving flower pots by Basque separatists.  What was not so awesome was the shooting of the Basque police officer who foiled the plan.  I love a good backstory to art but it's hard to reconcile a piece that just made me smile with a convergence of politics, crime and loss.  DEEP THOUGHTS for the day, right there.

So we ate and drank and saw a whole lotta other stuff in San Sebastian too.  Seriously, if you get the chance, go there.  You won't be disappointed.

*Clearly, I prefer to sound like an asshole on other topics.