Today we headed for San Sebastián or rather Donastia as it’s known in the Basque Country. I’m back on driving duty and feel I have to prove I’m skilled behind the wheel - rather like a driving test!
I spent some time identifying a couple of car parks in advance as this is often tricky to do once negotiating one way systems. In the event we literally came across the first one by chance and found the lower level to be virtually empty - result! (They also had great toilets accessible using the parking ticket so nice and clean).
San Sebastián is quite a large city but with a friendly feel and with a stunning long yellow sand beach - La Concha. It was great watching from afar a group of Asian nuns we had seen earlier walking through the city running on the sand and posing in front of the sea!
Our continued search for Rick Stein’s restaurants that he visited in his DVD was yet again foiled as La Vina was closed but we went to a great and obviously popular pintxos bar where we enjoyed a range of pintxos and a couple of beers. We wandered around, rested in a lovely park with fountains and finished up with a slice of cake and cortado coffee. Before we left we picked up some supplies for our evening meal as we predicted a late return.
From here was decided to head further east until we reached a lovely little town called Hondarribia from which you can look across to France so on this trip we have seen France and been within 50kms of Portugal!
Hondarribia is a lovely town with a rather austere 10th century parador opposite an excellent ‘Tourismo’. The houses all have wooden balconies and virtually every building has an ornate 17th century crest on it. We wandered down into the old town and saw the fishermen’s houses (now pretty much mostly restaurants), all painted in bright colours and we enjoyed a coke and plate of pimientos padron - guaranteed to get the digestion going!
We walked slowly back to the car and drove back to our ‘bodega’ home. This evening we enjoyed our purchases of chorizo, cheese and bread in the living area next to our room - the €1 bottle of wine did taste like just €1 so we splashed out and tried the chilled bottle of Taxoli wine that this bodega produces - lovely.
@777margo@danette@caterina Thank you - I have a lovely series of shots of these nuns but I was a bit worried to post as I didn't want people t think I was making fun of them. It's the complete opposite, I thought it was brilliant seeing people simply enjoying themselves and having fun!
