Spanish Adventures (19-23)

I am currently in the Santander, Spain airport killing some time before my flight to London so I thought I’d start writing a little update on my adventure to this point. So far I have been to Toledo, Madrid and San Sebastian. Marco and I took the overnight bus to Madrid on Saturday night and then caught another bus that morning to Toledo where we spent most of the day. It was a pretty cool little city and, if you don’t like to see other tourists, the perfect time to go. First off, it was a Sunday – always a quiet day in Spain – and second off the temperature was having trouble getting above 1 degree Celsius, which is about 34 degrees Farenheight. The city has the same Muslim foundations as Sevilla, but what makes it so unique is that much of the Muslim constructions remain standing today. It is located on a hill and is enclosed by a “Muralla” in which everything of importance to the Islamic tradition can be found. The streets are narrow, steep and windy – and the drivers are crazy. I think that they rival off-road drivers in terms of spectacularness for the places where they manage to fit those vehicles. We spent the day wandering, getting lost, finding our way back to the cathedral (located in the middle of the city) and then getting lost some more. It wasn’t too big which allowed us to see just about everything in the time that we were given.

We returned to Madrid with no plan for the following night or, for that matter, the next 3 days. Our original idea was to go to take an overnight bus to Bilbao, but that bus would have had us arriving at 5:00 am – a little bit early given that we had no place to stay. We searched other destinations and eventually decided to take the 12:30 am bus to San Sebastian. Accordingly, we arrived at 6:30 am and began our search for a place to stay. We found a bar with internet and from there we booked a hostel for that night. We got there at about 8 in the morning and had to ring the doorbell on and off for about half an hour before somebody finally came to our service. The workers weren’t there, but we slept in the main room for a couple of hours – bed or no bed it felt amazing to lie down – before heading out into the city. And, as luck would have it, it just so happened to be the day of the biggest festival in San Sebastian. San Sebastian is located in the Bask country in the north of Spain and, as we quickly discovered, is a completely different culture when compared with that of Andalusia. In honor of the holiday (I hope) all of the woman wore dresses that reminded me of those worn by the Omish and the men wore little hats like the Scottish. San Sebastian is located right on the coast and receives a lot of moisture making it a very green area. The people combined with the scenery convinced me time and time again that we were in Ireland, Scotland or the 1800’s. The streets were jam-packed with people drinking sidra (a famous type of cider – which is very unsavory) and eating chorizo (which is also ate in sevilla, but is made differently here). From 11 that morning to 12 that night the setting didn’t change. People singing, dancing old dances and talking in their native tongue of Bask. This language, as far as anybody knows, has absolutely no similarities to any other in the world, in fact, nobody even knows where the Bask as a group of people derived from. I at first thought that there were similarities between this and Celtic, but I ran into an Irish person who told me that that was like comparing English to Chinese. We spent the day exploring the city, watching the festivities and doing the recommended sightseeing. We also walked what had to be 10 miles. We both loved San Sebastian as a city itself. The wide, clearly marked streets were a nice contrast to those narrow, curvy ones found in Sevilla and Toledo. It was all incredibly green (one color that Sevilla severely lacks) and the fact that it was located right on the ocean brought it all together- though maybe the summer would have been a better time for taking advantage of such water.

Marco left the next day (Tuesday) but I stayed and spent the majority of my time trying to rediscover the incredibly cheap sandwich shop that we had found the day before to no avail. I met some Australian mates (say in Australian accent or else that looks weird) and we went out to a few tapa, or “pincha”, bars. In San Sebastian they have this technique where they put the little tapas (be it little sandwiches, croquetas, pimientos, ect) on the bar in front of you. The plates are continually full (you aren’t, due to their size) and incredibly delicious looking. The idea is that you eat as many as you want and then tell the bar tender how many you had at the end and pay for it then. In terms of profit making the system is ingenious. A) You just can’t stop yourself B) they’re small enough that you can’t fill yourself up C) they are very good and D) they are ridiculously overpriced. We were in one bar for a grand total of 30 minutes and ended up with a bill of 37 euros between the 4 of us. We could have ate 37 one euro cheesburgers at mcdonalds. That’s almost 10 to each of us. But I guess that you have to experience that local flavor.

So I guess that phase one of the adventure is almost over – the Spain phase. Now its off to England for 4 days followed by Florence. Anybody know some helpful/essential Italian???

- Top left: Me in Toledo
- Top right: Toledo
- Bottom right: Me in San Sebastian
- Bottom left: Marco and I in San Sebastian at some famous (we couldn't figure out why) statues

Also this isn't quite how I would have chosen to arrange the photos, but this program is impossible to work with. And even more than impossible to get how you want it to look.