Exploring San Sebastián with an old friend

 I have a friend, Lisa, who's an ex-Adelaidean who lives in Europe and who I've managed to catch up with on two of my last three trips: in Paris in 2016 (including the disappointing trip to Versailles) and then again in Cologne in 2019. We'd spoken about catching up on this trip at some point and things had worked out in such a way that she'd be able to make it to San Sebastián to spend some time with us.

Since we had stuff we needed to do - I had to blog, Rochelle had theatre stuff, Lisa had work - we opted for an 11am start; we got up and had breakfast at the hotel, since they had a small dining room on our floor and a decent-looking menu for only €9. After that it was back to the room to get stuff done before we set out to meet Lisa at a cafe at 11.00.

Some stuff we saw on the way.

The rest of the day we spent wandering around San Sebastián. We stopped a few times for (too much) food and (too many) drinks - including a phenomenal pintxos bar in the old town where we had to almost assault the waiter to keep him from taking our (much-wanted) jug of sangria away when I couldn’t work out to to explain to him we only needed three glasses and not the four he’d brought us - what I think happened was that he then thought we ordered three glasses of sangria and not a jug. But we managed to keep our jug and he only left with the extra, unwanted glass - and a dissatisfied expression.

We followed all that up with a visit to a bakery for more local pastries, and then more walking. We had a bench inside but I foolishly left it to double-check for a table outside (since there was some confusion at the counter of whether we could order there or they would come outside and take our order; the former seemed better since we probably would struggle to accurately name and/or pronounce the things we wanted to order) and our bench got stolen by a older Spanish woman who refused to give it back. But we fairly quickly grabbed another bench, so that worked out okay.

Getting in somewhere for dinner was a bit of a struggle; we’d been recommended a place called Atari by people we’d sat next to for dinner in Biarritz, but obviously it was a popular spot, since we couldn’t get anywhere near a table when we went there. But after a bit of wandering and consulting of Google ratings, we found a quieter bar and sat down.

Of course there are pictures.

Got a shock when I saw this since, since there's a word here that in some English-speaking countries is an ethnic slur; in Basque it means 'there is'.

We saw a woman walking a shiba inu.

I didn't check, but I assume this is Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

The pintxos bar we had lunch at.

And the lunch itself.

More from the display counter. They have a good system where everything has numbers and you just fill out a form with how many you want of each one.

There are a *lot* of options.

Back onto the street.

A hat store with genuine Stetsons.

We stop for pastries. On the left is another local dessert, the Basque cheesecake.

We saw a woman with a husky.

The water is a very interesting colour here.

There was a shop that had this sad clown statue. I can't remember what kind of shop it was, though.

Dinner. On the left, really good calamari. The other small plate is (I think) cheese and caramelised onion on bread.

Patatas bravas.

Beef cheek with potatoes.

Wild mushroom crepe.

Cod - or, at least, fish - on the left; steak on the right.

If that wasn't enough - it probably was, but I think we'd all gone a little insane with gluttony at this point - we went to another place for dessert. Clockwise from bottom: rice pudding; a local dessert with cream, apple, brandy and walnuts; and flan.

We walked - very slowly - home. But stopped to take a picture of the cathedral.