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We didn't make reservations in San Sebastian, although not for lack of effort, because all the pensiones listed in Lonely Planet only accept in-person reservations. We wound up wandering the streets, looking for a tourist information office, which was closed for Wednesday for a holiday ("Saint Lorenzo the something or other," our kindly and knowledgeable hotel lady told us).
We lucked into a room in an extremely nice place, with air/con, bar, spacious and clean bathroom and good location in the Parte Vieja (old part). Hari was so overjoyed to be out of the Paris hotel and into somewhere clean she danced around the room.
We went out looking for the vegetarian restaurant listed in the guidebook, which was no longer there, so we found a pizza place, where we had more good times with veggie food.
There was a promising salad, for which we didn't know one ingredient: "chatka." So Eric asked the server girl what it was. We didn't quite understand, so he asked, "but it's not meat?" and she looked shocked. "No, no," she said. What she then added, we're assuming, was that it was not meat, but "marisco" - seafood. Unfortunately, we did not yet know this word, and "chatka" turned out to be crab. Hari then got peas and carrots on her pizza, which was interesting as well.
We explored the city a little bit after lunch, and ended up exploring our way right back to the hotel, where we took naps. Hari kept napping then while Eric went out and found dinner at the one market in the entire town that was not closed for the holiday.
Since we were in town the next morning and could appear in person to make a reservation, Eric went out and found the Pension Lorenzo, where we could stay for $30 a night, although it was a significant downgrade in quality from the night before. Our room was the smallest we had had on the trip, with barely room for the bed. The bathroom was down the hall.
We managed to put together a lunch with two apples, two plums, two loaves of bread, cheese and tomatoes, for under $5, which was nice. We took lunch to the beach, and hung out in the sun with everyone else. We swam out to a swim dock, and although the water was colder than in the south, it still felt nice.
We ran into problems at the train station, again. After taking our number and waiting for a long time, the man told us that a train to Segovia, where we wanted to go, was absolutely impossible. It turned out that it would be difficult enough to find a train to Madrid, and we ended reserving a night train from San Sebastian to Madrid at 10:00 the next night.
In keeping with the difficulty, we tried looking for dinner in the Parte Vieja, but were stymied again by the Spanish cuisine. We looked for nearly an hour without finding a single vegetarian item, although we passed several tapas bars that probably had vegetarian fried things, like dough. Finally we found a place that offered spaghetti as a side dish, and Hari was able to negotiate getting that as her main course. Eric had beer.
We got up very early in the morning to get in one last swim, and found the beach deserted. We also found it cold and cloudy, or at least foggy. This kept Hari out of the water, so she instead took pictures from the shore of Eric's head sticking out of some of the small waves.
Unlike Cinque Terre, we had a beach town, a full day with a night train, and somewhere to actually put our luggage (although it took three tries at the locker, which did not refund the coins if you made a mistake).
With nothing better to do and no place to go, we walked around the peninsula town in a counter-clockwise direction, starting from the train station. We stopped at the river mouth to have lunch, and take pictures of sailboats and water crashing on the breakwater. Around the peninsula we found the aquarium, which was magnificent. It had a large tank, with several different viewing areas, and some interesting sharks (including two big sand tigers). Eric sat down to draw the sharks and the turtles in his sketchbook, while Hari tried not to fall asleep and amused herself by taking close-up pictures of evil-looking stingrays.
When we left the aquarium, we had run out of things to do. We wandered aimlessly, past a dock where kids were running to make their kayak lessons in time. It smelled like fish, and fishermen lined the runway to offer samples of their shrimp. Discarded shrimp shells lined the ground. It was nice to be back in Spain.
Since we had walked past it several times without actually walking toward it, we decided to see the cathedral. Surly teenagers were skateboarding on the front steps, making us feel more at home.
When the sun started setting, we went back to the beach and sat on a bench. A Basque political march went down the street, distributing fliers protesting the 600 Basque freedom fighters/ETA terrorists currently languishing in Spanish or French jails. The march played eerie music, which we took to be significant to Basque people, although it sounded to like something from the X-Files.
The sun set over the harbor, which was pretty, and we walked back and made it onto our train, which we found inhabited by four French tourists. For more on that, and to continue on in chronological order, see Madrid.
