On Friday evening, we found ourselves at the San Sebastian bus station. Since it was kind of late and in the interest of saving a little money, we went in search of a grocery store to buy sandwich stuff for dinner and breakfast food for the morning, especially since our hostel wasn't near anything. After buying food, we walked to the bus stop. While on the bus, we had to check several times (and eventually ask the bus driver) if we were going in the right direction. The stops listed in the bus were in Spanish, but the ones listed on the hostel's directions and at the stops themselves were in Basque, which is nothing like Spanish (lots of k's and x's), and difficult to understand. We finally made it to our stop, much later than we had anticipated.
We got off the bus at the entrance to the park. As we were trying to figure out where we were going, large flashes of lightning illuminated the sky. The directions said to go to the left, but there were two left paths in the park. We asked two different people where the hostel was, but both said "No un hostel aquí"-meaning that there wasn't a hostel in the park. But we were sure there was. We chose to take the path up the hill in hopes there would be a sign somewhere. We got to the top of the hill and there were three forks...all to the left of the current path. By this time, it was raining quite a bit. We didn't have any idea where to go from there, so we pulled out the directions again. We chose a path and kept walking. Then it started to pour and hail and essentially flash flood. We abandoned our walk and ran back down the hill to a pavilion near the bus stop. The wind and rain were quite something! We tried calling the hostel and asking for the phone number of a taxi, but they only gave us 7 of a 9 digit phone number...not quite what we needed. We tried flagging down a taxi, but they were all full. We were able to get the number off the side of a cab, but when we tried calling, the operator was impatient that we couldn't give them an exact location (the bus stop wasn't good enough, apparently). Once the storm let up, we tried walking in the park again and saw another man. As a last ditch effort, I asked if he knew if there was a hostel anywhere. Lucky for us, Mikel did know! He had been birdwatching (in a storm...go figure) and would show us how to get there on the map. Once he showed us the path, it was dark and there were no lights or signs; we were not confident we could find it on our own. We asked him to try calling a cab for us since he could speak more easily. Unfortunately, they hung up on him, too. He was very nice and asked "¿Quieres un compañero?"And so he was. Our companion for a very, very long walk around the outside of the park to the hostel. All weekend, we referred to him as Mikel the Angel because we didn't think we would have found the hostel without him.
After our tiring Friday night, we had much more success on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, we got directions from our hostel to places that we could hike. We walked down to the beach and then from there found our way up a small mountain (very large hill)-Mount Ulia. We had walked for a really long time on a road (we thought there would be trails) and were about to turn around when there was a parking lot. We walked toward it and found that it was the entrance to the park we had been looking for all along. We first stopped at the benches near the top. We were so high up that we could see the fog floating at head height across the open field. Then we continued on the dirt trails toward the cliffs that looked out over the ocean. It was beautiful and well worth the hike! Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera, but Tarah had hers, so she has a lot of good photos.
After our hike, we found a gelato shop-it was well-earned! Hit the spot! We walked toward the center of town and made our way back to the grocery store. At breakfast, we realized that the hostel had quite a large array of pots and pans and cooking space, so we were going to take the opportunity and cook ourselves dinner since we all like to cook. We made ourselves a feast both Saturday night and Sunday morning. Saturday was ravioli and chicken with spinach, tomatoes, onions, and peppers, and salad (with no mayonnaise--a favorite of Spaniards) and cookies, of course. On Sunday, we had French toast (no maple syrup to be found, unfortunately), scrambled eggs, bacon, orange juice, and lots of fruit. So, so, so delicious!
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| Preparing our feast. |
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| Hiking toward the ocean. |
After checking out of our hotel, we went to Playa de la Concha, which is a pretty large beach in San Sebastian and one of the more famous ones in northern Spain.
Even though the weekend started out a little rough, it was a great adventure and very nice to have a relaxed schedule. A good break from all of the touring we had been doing.
Side note: The Monday that I got back (June 23) was El Día de San Juan-a big deal in Spain. There are large bonfires on the beaches and a lot of people jump over them (my padres specifically told me not to before I went down to the beach). It was really neat to see one of the fiestas while in Spain. I'm not sure if I'm going to make it to Pamplona for the Running of the Bulls, so this might have to suffice.
Second side note: I may have already written about how after the first weekend when I ate seafood paella and squid in Comillas that I told my padres that I really liked seafood. Well, as a result, I have eaten some very interesting things. Anchoas (anchovies), fish with bones that are big enough to crunch, but small enough that you can't pick them up, and tonight...baby eel. All through dinner, I thought it was worms or something of the sort, but I figured if the two-year-old granddaughter was sitting at the table with me and eating them, I could stomach them too. They didn't taste like much, but they had a very interesting texture. I don't think I'd choose to eat them on my own, but I can add it to the list of interesting foods I've eaten here.
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