Bonsoir:
It’s Thursday night and we’re back in France. We’re in Toulouse, the 4th largest city in France (1.2 million), located in the southwest part of the country. Toulouse is an aeronautical center (Airbus headquarters and France’s Space Center) and the European headquarters of Intel. We arrived just before dark, managing to get caught in some rush hour freeway traffic. So, we begin our discoveries tomorrow.
We left San Sebastian this morning. Of course, it was a sunny, beautiful day.
We promised more San Sebastian photos, which are worthy because many people feel San Sebastian is one of the world’s most beautiful cities. In our last group of photos we showed a park (a downtown square). In this group see a large building. That building overlooks the downtown square and you see Marlene in the park. On one of the primary shopping streets you see a typical building – 4-7 stories with first floor retail and housing above. Some of the streets are closed to traffic and you see the local cathedral at the end of one such street. There’s lots of classy housing throughout the downtown area, with one photo showing the door to the apartments located up the stairway. There are two or three great beaches, with photos of the biggest beach. The tide was up on a stormy day, but with the tide out the beach is huge. Also, while we were out walking we happened to see an interesting old bank building. Admittedly, noting interesting old architecture isn’t all that unique in Europe.
No question, San Sebastian is a beautiful place. It has great architecture and beautiful hills enclosing the city against a great bay on the ocean. There are hardly any single family homes. It seems that almost all of the housing in apartment style, both in the old town and central city, as well as outlying areas where there a townhouses and apartment complexes, all brick construction and very classy. We found only one small area near the port where you would say the housing was not top-notch, and that housing was not bad. The population of 180,000 lives in a rather small geographical area. Great things have been done in San Sebastian, like no electrical lines above ground, no parking above ground (except some street parking), all sidewalks in the old town and center city tiled, and on and on. And, the city is very, very clean. The same was said about Barcelona, but the Basque area almost reaches Japan levels of cleanliness. It is very fresh looking. Everything looks like it was just washed or just painted. The city is known for great food and it has great food. We ended our visit at the “best restaurant in town” last night. The scouting report was that it is “a great and impressive steak house”. Well, it was on a narrow street in old town, had a front door you could walk by without noticing, and it had that old charm with only about ten tables. The menu was interesting for a steak house. There were lots of appetizers, lots of salads and lost of seafood dishes. And, there was carne (meat). There was a veal filet, small lamb chops and a bull chop. That was it – one steak, at least by our understanding of steak. We selected the small lamb chops and the bull chop. The lamb chops were very small, but very tasty. The bull chop (beef) looked like it was a t-bone steak about 3/4 inch thick. We asked to have it well done, which got a doubtful look from the waitress. We finally said, “well done and maybe a very little bit of red in the middle”. Well, the meat came and it was totally raw, with the exception of about 1/8 inch on the top, which was charred. We sent it back and asked to have it cooked totally well done. It came back with a very small bit of red, very juicy and with a salt rub. The beef did not taste like French beef. It was delicious. It was clearly one of the best meals we’ve had in Europe, though both plates came with French Fries, which Marlene argues is not good enough for a meal of that level.
Today’s journey started with a stop 15 minutes from San Sebastian in Hondarribia, which included another Basque pintxos lunch, and then a drive through the nearby French beach town of St-Jean-de-Luz. Both stops were well worth it. Photos coming soon.
The Wilsons
