San Sebastian

A few weeks back me and the crew (Dave, Harrison, Evan, Brian, Ashley, Katie, Rachel, Ashley...) took an overnight train to San Sebastian, a beautiful beach town in the Basque country, just on the corner of the Spanish-French border (the other, southeast corner, is Barcelona). For the Hemingway fans on the blog, you may remember that San Sebastian is where Jake Barnes goes after the Pamplona bullfights in 'The Sun Also Rises' to wait for Lady Brett while she finishes her torrid tryst with Pedro Romero in Madrid. It´s as relaxing as Hemingway describes it... maybe moreso, and we had a great time.

Here´s what I packed...(water, wine, books, paper, bread, sardines, journal, passport, chesterfields...) On the way over we passed around the wineskin with a Portuguese trucker and a Salamancan student on his way home to Burgos to see his novia in the compartment that we shared. Around three am, some snooty, smelly, smelly Frenchmen kicked us out of their seats, which, admittedly, we were sitting in, but they could have found other seats just like I did when I got on the train and found my plaza occupied. I retaliated by making comments about the French and their personal hygiene habits in loud English, and I think I was understood.



And then our señora gave us this enormous bag of food, a bottle of cider, and a small bottle of aguardiente de yerba, this gross licorice flavored liquor from the nearby sierras of Salamanca.



Here´s the street where we stayed (with Dave modelling)...



and the nearby playground with carousel....


and nearby fruit market...



Here´s the port, shown from the east side...



And finally the beach, ´La Concha´... which is curved, somewhat like a conch shell. La Concha is not to be confused with La Cuesta, which is the other beach at San Sebastian and used mostly for surfing. I tried surfing on Saturday, but found that without something called a 'rash guard', it´s not really a very pleasant experience. Specifically, there´s a lot of nipple chaffing against the surfwax, and if you don´t know what you´re doing, like I don´t, there´s not as much wave-riding as one would hope. Here´s Evan with his board...



And one of the best parts of the trip... we bought a soccer ball and played all afternoon on Saturday. Me kicking...



Brian fetching the balón, all smiles...



Juggling...



Me eating it on a diving header...



The team...


And later four Spanish kids, about 13 years old each, challenged us to a game and soundly beat us. We were 'Real Estadounidense' and they were 'Real Español'. I think we lost about 6-4, then switched teams, but I was on the losing team again with this skinny little kid that they kept calling 'Puto Alfonso'. He was garbage...





On Sunday, our last day, it was raining pretty steadily, but Dave, Ashley, and I decided to brave the weather and hike of the Monte de Orgúl, a big hill that overlooks both beaches. It has a big statue of JC on top, which makes the whole town look a bit like Rio de Janeiro...



Dave and I posed accordingly on the way up...



And when we came down, completely soaked, we went to a bakery for breakfast and had the BIGGEST, most DELICIOUS, most BUTTERY breakfast ever of pastries and café con leche...


And then I wrote about it on the way home in my hip little moleskine, over a beer in the dining car, all the while repping Baltimore...



Here´s Ashley´s art shot of it...




That´s all! In our next two editions, a trip to Granada and Nerja, on the Costa del Sol with Kat, then our fantastic road trip/soccer game to Porto, Santiago de Compostela, and La Coruña.

Love,
Robbie.