A different flavor of Spanish Basque

I unenthusiastically dragged myself out of bed at 7 in the morning to catch an early train over to San Sebastian, or Donostia in Basque. Upon stepping off the train, I quickly realized that despite its proximity, this place was no Hondarribia or Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

The Maria Cristina Bridge looked like it belonged in Paris more than in the parts of the Basque Country I'd spent the previous day exploring. And it had some awesome lamp posts:

The cathedral also spoke to a much more recent past than the buildings I'd seen yesterday.

Turns out that a variety of fire (by accident), shelling (by the French), and ransacking (by the English and Portuguese) between the late Middle Ages and the early 1800s means that little has been standing for more than two centuries in this politically important border town. Yet the town did a good job of picking itself back up. The casino-turned-city-hall is nothing to scoff at.

Even the beaches in San Sebastian are fancy.

The Parte Vieja, or historical city center, is home to some charming, narrow, mostly pedestrian streets.

And there was some dangerously good shopping both within and beyond the Parte Vieja. 

The city, as I soon realized, is a major tourist destination and the site of many cultural events. It has even been selected, along with Warsaw, to be the 2016 European Capital of Culture. It probably merited more than a four and a half hour visit, especially when you consider that this included at least thirty minutes of half-napping on a park bench overlooking the beach, shopping, and a break to sip wine and eat some seafood. But if you have a chance, I recommend the latter. I found not only free wifi but also yummy pintxos--the Basque take on tapas-- and a warm and sunny atmosphere at the Bar Amazonas (Plaza de Bilbao I), well worth the visit. Sadly, the train schedules didn't offer me many options, so after powering through my white wine and a final set of emails, I ran off to catch a couple of trains back to France, where Nicolas will be joining me (in Biarritz) this afternoon, followed by the rest of the gang tomorrow morning.