Day 11 -- San Sebastian

Today we drove to San Sebastian. We were a bit sad to be leaving the Rioja, but a little hopeful of better weather on the coast. Not knowing anything about the Basque region the drive itself was surprisingly beautiful. Steep green farms and forests of pine and fall color lined the windy mountain road. I actually felt as if I was driving in a video game where they can make up a pretend landscape, but instead we were in reality driving through it!

San Sebastian is a summer getaway for sure but was nice to see the city without all the tourists. We walked from our hotel to the ocean and the main part of town.

Overlooking the Playa de la concha



San Sebastian is a beautiful old town that looks more like Buenos Aires or Paris.





Apparently the thing to do hear is the 'tapas crawl' Where you walk down street after street lined with 'pinchos' bars.

One of the streets lined with the tapas bars


All the food (big hors d'ouvers) is out on platters across the bar. Everyone stands around and points or picks up what they want, has a few, a glass of wine or canya(draft beer) and moves on to the next one. Its basically a city wide cocktail party, except you have to pay. But only a euro or two per pincho. We did this for lunch an dinner. It was quite an event as the Spanish here in the Basque region sounds nothing like spanish, and has too many x's, z's and two few vowels to even try and fake. Not to mention we had no idea the etiquette for getting food. But though trial and error and correction from the bartender we got the hang of it and had a great cultural experience!