Well we are still at our little haven at Zarautz, but will depart tomorrow
south to Pamplona to run with the bulls. Today we popped along the coast to
San Sebastian about 20km away. As usual the drive was pretty easy except for
the Spanish road signs and road markings that can take some time to get
used to. You know roughly where you want to go but the signs and markings
can sometimes leave you in suspense until the last moment as to how to get
there. You tend to end up with a very trigger happy indicator finger, and
are constantly checking on all available mirrors to ensure that your escape
route is clear from any sneaky cars that are trying to out manoeuvre you.
Not that the locals tend to under or overtake at any inopportune moments at
all.
San Sebastian is a pretty big place but luckily we had prior knowledge of a
good place to find parking thanks to our supply of 'snail trails', articles
from Practical Motorhome magazine (stop yawning at the thought), that we
have stashed on board. Once parked up and Sue had confirmed with a friendly
Spanish girl in a nearby shop that it was okay to park there, we didn't
understand the parking sign, we headed off on the pleasant walk into the
main part of the town. The Spanish are lucky people in that there are cycle
lanes all over the place, mostly running along side the pathways, but this
at times causes issue of not only trying to avoid getting flattened by
vehicles but also running the gauntlet of the many cyclists that hurtle
around.
The seafront of the town is very pleasant with a huge promenade running its
length of the circular natural bay with a very nice flat sandy beach just
below.
After a long walk and a nose in a few of the local bars to see what sort of
food was on order we eventually came across the Information centre. That's
always a dilemma as if you don't have a map of the town but want one you
can't find the Information centre to get one. Anyway, the young man was very
helpful and spoke perfect English. He pointed out some nice places to see
and also provided some answers for essential questions we had. Namely, how
does the pintxos (tapas) thing work and also was the parking we had used
okay.
Armed with the map we did a quick tour of some nice sights and headed back
to the old town to hunt down some of the aforementioned pintxos. Due to the
time of day being just after siesta most of the bars were shutting as the
lunch trade had petered out. We eventually managed to find a nice open bar
and settled in. I managed to mumble the correct combination of words to the
friendly barman and returned to our table with a beer, a glass of wine, and
a plate. The bar was covered in a selection of plates of pintxos of all
descriptions. You just help yourself and tally up at the end. Half and hour
or so later suitably refreshed and snacked out (well sort of as we could
have eaten our way from one end of the bar to the other) we headed back
across town to where Noddy was parked up, hoping he would be where we left
him, well you never know. A few minutes later we were back on the road
negotiating the signs and markings and headed back for camp.
Just to salute to local delicacies we had partaken of I knocked up some
pintxos of our own for dinner with the limited supply of ingredients we had
on board, and they weren't half bad too.
Quiero un trozo de ese queso
Hasta luego
M&S
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