Day 47 – 25 August 2023 – San Sebastian, Spain

A wonderful location for breakfast this morning, sitting out on the patio looking out over the well-manicured garden with Norm & Christine. The food was excellent, a great selection, fresh & very tasty. I indulged in the fresh local meats again, more Iberico ham plus local salamis. The selection in cheeses was also very good.

We are off in the bus at 9am to Bilbao & the Guggenheim Museum. We pass through a lot of green hills with lots of trees & some green farms, so different to the Madrid area. The Guggenheim Museum is an amazingly impressive building, the architecture is stunning. As we approach the front entrance we are met by a giant dog made from living flower plants, it is certainly very impressive. From the entrance the museum is impressive as well & we go inside & pay our senior discount fee, strange, they didn’t even ask our age.

The top floor is our destination to start with so that we make our way down, that way there should be less people. What a disappointment, our grandchildren can paint better than these, some of the paintings are rubbish, the architecture is great. One thing we did like was a room filled with lights & mirrors that we were shut into, that was a great experience & we liked it, it was beautiful.

The middle floor was a little better, there was a collection of what looked like giant flower buds in different colours that appealed. There were some coloured geometric designs that brought a little life to some of the walls.  Again, we didn’t think much of the paintings & other artwork. Some of the highlights were looking down onto the art installations on the ground floor. One of these was a collection of massive sheet steel shapes laid out on the ground floor that you could walk into.

The ground floor had a little more interest with some colour & more sculpture work. We walked through the giant steel sheets, it was amazing the feeling we got whilst walking through them, it was a strange sensation. I noticed one man afterwards was crouching against a wall trying to get his bearings again, he got that dizzy from the experience.

Outside was a large pool with large red circles floating like lily pads, plus a few other artworks, such as a giant spider.  We both felt the museum itself was the best work of art from the whole experience, it is a stunning building.

Another drive along the northern coast of Spain, more rolling green hills, small beaches, rocky headlands & the Atlantic Ocean. We stop at a small seaside town, Getaria, notable as being the birth place of the navigator that went with Ferdinand Magellan on his circumnavigation of the globe, Juan Sebastian Elkano. We walk down into the port area towards the church & past the old fort, the street is full of restaurants & we can smell the fish cooking. As we walk past we see the fish being cooked over hot coals on the street outside the restaurants, it smells delicious with the fish, the smoke & the aroma of the hot coals. As tempting as it smelled we did not have any fish lunch because we were going out tonight for a big dinner. We are in the Basque region of Spain now & the locals speak the Basque language, not Spanish.

San Sebastian is the capital of the Basque region & is our stop tonight. Our hotel is nice & we have a little time before we head off again with a local guide to explore the city of San Sebastian. We drive past a large park overlooking the beach, this has the old summer palace of the former Queen of Spain, very nice spot. We drive up a large headland overlooking San Sebastian, this has an old amusement park on the top, it is packed with children, parents & grandparents as it is still the school holidays. The views are fantastic, the bay that San Sebastian is built around is pretty, with a large island in the middle of the bay. There are lots of boats at anchor sheltered behind the island. Apparently San Sebastian was the home port of pirates in years past.

Next the bus takes us down to the old town area & we have a short drive around with our local guide explaining the highlights & the history of the city, it is all very interesting. We then get off the bus & are taken on a walking tour of the old town, no cars allowed in any of the streets. The place is busy, so many bars & restaurants, most people standing up, hardly a chair in sight, mostly younger people. We walk past the harbour, packed full of fishing boats, past the old church, down the narrow streets. It is a great experience, all the while our guide happily chatting away telling us all about her Basque city.

We stop at the Jatetxea Restaurant (Basque spelling) & split up, only 9 of us are having dinner, plus Sonia our Tour Director. The restaurant is empty, except for us, the Spanish eat late. Our 3 course meal is delicious, I had the black squid & Tereza the lamb shanks, all washed down with local wine & finished with desert & coffee. We had a great chat at the table with our companions & the service from all the staff was extraordinary, we could not have asked for more. As we finished our meal some of the locals started to trickle in at around 10 pm. Another great day with 7.5 kilometres under our feet.