Golden sand, gentle breeze, soft waves in a peaceful cove, children and family gathered on the beach on a lazy summer afternoon, the crisp blue sky meeting the deep blue sea in the horizon.
Did I mention the temperate 21-25 oC?
This would probably describe my dream beach holiday location. This is actually where I am located. The sunny San Sebastian.
No wonder if you google this place the first thing that is mentioned is the beach. The weather and climate here makes it probably one of the best beach summer holiday location in Europe.
I write this on our second day in San Sebastian, the first day was spent half on travel and half on everyday chores such as organizing phone, accommodation and waiting for Dominique. Our fourth member on this trip.
On our way into Spain, at one of the transit stops we got to see a barber shop choir practicing at the station! Sounded terrific!
Oh, and like France, stepping through their borders we did not have to go through any custom either, just like getting off at another local train station.
This is the beach just around the corner from our hotel.
There are fishes in the cove!
We also visited the Cathedral Buen Pastor (Cathedral of the Good Shepherd)
There is a lot of street busking, from musical performance to Flamingo dancing, even magic shows too!
Back to talking about Dominique, he was scheduled to arrive before 8pm, so we actually got quite worried as he did not arrive until 9pm. We tried calling him on his roaming phone but he did not switch it on.
Turns out the train he was suppose to be taking was full, he had to wait for another transit train.
While my mind was worrying, my stomach was rumbling with complaint as well.
Luckily we are now in Spain, a country where dinner at 9 is part of the norm. Once he arrived.
We headed for a local diner near our hotel.
Our dinner, paella, mixed meat dish, and a delicious blue cheese mixed salad. There was also a pasta but didn't arrive yet at the time of the photo.
Some night beach photos from the beach Bahia de la Concha, just around the corner from our hotel.
This is our room, we had another mix up with the room booking, we ended up with two singles and a double bed. Martin volunteered to sleep on the floor again. Now before you start thinking we are taking advantage of him, he keeps insisting that in fact he prefers the floor to soft beds.
It's a very small room, the shot is taken from the mirror to get in all three of the beds!
The next day we took a tour bus around San Sebastian, the tour bus only starts at 11am so we started our travelling in the afternoon. We took a small detour at the local markets, Martin's favorite place to visit, look at his face!
This time, we are not visiting historical buildings or museums but taking a walk through the beautiful scenic greenery of San Sebastian.
Photo of the boys at our bus stop.
These are actually bike lanes! When will Auckland city catch up to look after our bikers like they do overseas??
Ok, I just cannot resist posting a whole heap of sea photos, it's just so beautiful here. These are taken from Mount Urgull mendia.
We actually took a one hour hike up the mountain. This used to be a fort San Sebastian. We were going up to visit the Statue of Jesus, I think the tour guide said it is the third tallest in the world.
This beach is in fact artificial!
Us on the bus after the long hike!
At lunch I got to taste my first jamon ibernico! Yum!
Next stop was to Monte Igeldo media. The highest point in San Sebastian. An old amusement park and hotel is up here. We took the Funicular up. The view is very spectacular.
Afterwards we went to the train station to get our tickets to Leon for the next day. To our shock and horror there is no tickets, for the next three days!!! Why you ask? Because today is the Bon Jovi tour concert here!!
Stuck, we ended up finding the intercity bus, ALSA, they were all out of direct tickets to Leon as well, so we could only buy a transit ticket through Burgos. The total journey is going to be 7 hours! And our pockets is out of an extra 30 euros...
Traveling often has unexpected changes from the original planned routes, I'm happy to report all of us took on a good cheers and decided to enjoy the detour as much as possible tomorrow.
We did decide to stay in for a cheap supermarket brought dinner to compensate the ticket cost, but the boys couldn't resist going out for a glass of beer later in the night. Who could blame them? This is a beautiful city with terrific night life. Me? I decided I have had enough walking around for one day and decided to stay in and just relax and blog to you all.
Tomorrow will be a long trip on the bus!
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