San Sebastian

I was a little worried that for my day trip to San Sebastian, 6 hours wouldn't be sufficient to see it all. In fact, it was perfect. I'd say San Sebastian had a more elegant feel to it than Bilbao due to the architecture being more...fancy...elegant is the best way I can put it (I mean...look below).

Here are some highlights of things I saw:

^San Bizente Eliza Catholic Church

^​San Sebastián Cathedral​

^La Concha Beach

^San Telmo museum

^Little flower market

^Fish market (closed)

^The public library

I also hiked Monte Urgull. Here are the views and some pictures:

^I was very surprised to see this. On many signs I saw "tourists go home" but to see a sign with a swastika on it...promoting Hitler?! It made me upset that people think that was Hitler did was okay in any way. Genocide is never okay.

I stopped for pintxos - tortilla and croquettas. The first place I got tortilla because I read that was what the place was really good at making. The tortilla was really cool because it was an individual tortilla, which I'd never seen before! I'd only ever seen slices of tortilla. In San Sebastián, I realized that pintxos aren't just tapas with toothpicks in them. Because at both places I went, they were serving pintxos in dishes without toothpicks.

^Didn't get this but thought it looked so cool! I had to take a picture.

At the second place I got croquetas, expecting them to be tooth-picked to some pieces of bread, but instead I got two stand alone croquetas. Even though they look really fancy, I've come to the conclusion that pintxos and tapas are basically the same thing -- bite sized servings of yummy food.

It started POURING around 4. I still made my way to Miramar Palace, but took the public bus! I was going to walk but with the pouring rain...no way!

I was going to go to another lookout, but since I'd been to one already and it was pouring, I wasn't filling to get soaked for another viewpoint. From the pictures online, it's a great view...but I couldn't justify it to myself while the rain came pouring down (below picture of me trying to shelter myself).

I spent the last hour of my time taking shelter in a really nice coffee shop where I had one of the most natural, rich chai teas (below...loved it!). It was a nice, WARM and DRY way to spend my last little bit of time in San Sebastián.

Then I braved the rain and made it to the bus stop to make my way back to Bilbao for the night. I'm pretty lame about the rain especially as an Oregonian...I will admit that. At least I didn't catch a cold though and still got to see beautiful San Sebastián

^I thought the river looked low, but it was because the tide was out! When I crossed the river again to take the bus, it was very full (up to the dark green marks you can see on the side of the canal).