We’ve just arrived in Barcelona and I’m stuffed. It’s nearly 10pm, so it’s still light, but I am considering jumping into bed very soon, which is hard in a country where children are still out at midnight. But I just realised…..BAHAHAHAHA! I’m in the Mediterranean. Suckers.
Despite the clinging humidity, San Sebastian was quite nice. We stayed in the part of town called Parte Vieja, essentially translating to Old Town, which consists of a roughly five by five block square of peatonal streets and the aforementioned tall colonial buildings with their gorgeous wrought-iron balconies.
We went for a couple of walks alongside the beach and climbed up Monte Urgull, a small mountain which used to house several barracks back in the day (the oldest cannon I saw there was from the 1500s). It also has a mass grave of Britons who died there in a war or attempted incursion. It was a nice walk, and culminated in a beautifully panoramic view of the town and its beaches, as well as a big ass Jeebus statue. My highlight however was finding a beautiful big beetle, that for the life of me I can’t remember the name of. He had gorgeous big pinchers and didn’t seem too fazed about the snap-happy tourist gazing at him.
We wandered around town a little bit, in a vain attempt to find somewhere to purchase underwear but got to see quite a bit of the town. We had some pintxos, which are the Basque variety of the wonderful Spanish tapas – small two-bite sized snacks that are YUM, although they had a lot of seafood, which I guess normal people go bonkers for, but didn’t really push any of my buttons.
There are a few things that I’m really enjoying here in Spain; constant hot water, not having to put my toilet paper in the pin, drinking from the taps, being only alert to my security (instead of mega-highly-paranoid-alert) and hence being able to walk around by myself…though it is kinda counteracted by having to pay so much freaking money for everything.
Anyway, the next day we took a bus to Pamplona, a small town about an hour south-east of San Sebastian. In a few weeks it is home to the disgustingly barbaric custom of the running of the bulls, part of a bigger festival known locally as San Fermin. We walked the route that the bulls run, making idiots of ourselves as we tried to pull as much fun out of our disdain for the ceremony as we could, pretending to be bulls and the like.
Aside from this, Pamplona is a gorgeous little city – I am really sad that we only spent one night there on our way to Barcelona. The city centre is much like San Sebastian, but walk for another 5 minutes and you are inundated with green – a few parks circle the centre and nearly every street is tree-lined. It was gorgeous – so far my favourite place in Spain. We even went for a run this morning around one of the parks, which was great, although my level of fitness leaves a lot to be desired.
In the middle of one of the parks they have a miniature semi-zoo, filled with deer and peacocks and other assorted birds. One of the peacocks was albino, which thrilled me no end, and there were about 4 or 5 fawns in the deer herd, their gorgeous spotty coats almost glowing in the sunset as they frolicked around and took spontaneous floppy rests when they exerted themselves too much. The herd slowly moved down the corridor they were in, grazing slowly and keeping in check with the dominant male, who I think had had a tussle with a younger male – he was fine, but the younger male’s ear was covered in blood and a part of his antlers was hanging down, also blood-covered. But, he was still grazing away, apparently content in his injury and humiliation.
We continued to walk around Pamplona for as long as my feet would allow and then packed in it to get up early for our run. After our run we took the train to Barcelona (we spent 3 hours waiting in the bus station to find out it was full and had to go by train – costing us more, of course, but surprisingly, taking us longer) which seemed to take forever. When we arrived we were going to get a cab, but decided at the last minute to take the metro close to where we were (though we didn’t know exactly where it was – we had the address but the street wasn’t marked on the map) and try to grab a cab or find out where it was from there. So, apparently, it’s hard to hail a cab in Barcelona, everyone already has stinking passengers. We slowly walked around with our heavy, heavy backpacks and tried to find a cab, and slowly went in the direction of where we thought our hostel was. Luckily for us, it turned out the hostel was quite close, so we were able to walk, though ‘quite close’ doesn’t seem so close when you are carrying mega-big backpacks.
But hooray! Barcelona, here I come…..tomorrow after I sleep, thankyou.
Northern Spain photos
