Unfinished business

My 30^th Birthday occurred while I was living in London and for the occasion I arranged for eight of my nearest to travel to northern Spain for a surfing holiday, in the process checking out Bilbao and San Sebastian.

All was set, but unfortunately two days before we were due to fly I tore the ligaments in my ankle playing soccer.  Determined to go and with crutches in hand I spent the next week or so contributing to the global pool of black comedy gold as I attempted sand dunes, pension stairs and bridge crossings during a week of celebration.  The black comedy pinnacle being when my housemate at the time unbeknown to me removed the pins from my crutches while at the beach and in attempting to stand the crutches concertinaed on themselves and I fell face forward into the sand, hilarious.

Like most I’m a simple person and always felt a little cheated by my northern Spain experience and vowed one day to return sans crutches.  Flying into Bilbao we were primarily here, as are most, to check out the Guggenheim Musuem, a defining piece of architecture and the home to one of my favourite pieces of art, Puppy by Jeff Koons, that stands on permanent display at the entrance to the building.  I’m a big fan of Bilbao and its unpretentious nature that gives it the feeling of the real Spain, away from the tourist traps and hoards associated with other Spanish cities.

Puppy 

During my travels I’ve been asked a few times what was my favourite place, this is a tricky question as I often find myself subconsciously tailoring my response to my perception of what the asker would like if they were on holiday.  I can confidently say however that San Sebastian is and continues to be one of my favourite destinations and I could happily return again and again.

After staying in a pension in Bilbao, we had booked a hostel in San Sebastian. Sure, it’s less private, but within the first five minutes of arriving we’d already met a talkative New Yorker, Tom and agreed to catch up later for dinner and drinks. Tom had befriended the, ever present in any location in the world, group of Australians, and we all ended up doing a pintxos bar crawl through the old town of San Sebastian that evening.  Pintxos are inexpensive but delicious small servings that adorn bars throughout the Basque region, with the idea being that you roll from bar to bar, quaffing dirt cheap rioja or local cider while sampling the particular wares of each bar.  While it was our first, it was Tom’s last night and he took us on a crawl of his most delectable bars chosen through long nights of punishing research.  Each night after we thought about a standard sit down meal we’d end up lent against a pintxos bar, drinking and sampling the fine food on offer.

But it’s not just the food that makes San Sebastian such a winner, it’s a beautiful historic town with winding laneways and during the day there’s a choice within easy walking of a bay based beach and a surf beach where the number of learner surfers in the water at any one time is inversely proportional to the quality of the waves. Fortunately it required numerous hours sat on the beach studying and sampling the water to determine this relationship.

We also happened on San Sebastian during its 60^th International Film Festival and were asked numerous times if we were in town for the Festival, something we were completely ignorant of prior to arrival. 

People have different versions of their own personal hell, but one of mine would be waiting with the hoards behind a temporary barrier for a celebrity to walk down a red carpet. Given the proximity however of our hostel to the Film Festival we would on many occasion come across such hoards lined up waiting for a celeb sighting.  

Strolling past the assembled throng one evening there was a palpable increase in the frothing frenzy amongst the gathered masses and so I found myself embracing my own personal hell and standing amongst them waiting for a car to arrive in the hope it was someone I vaguely knew. After the first car passed we were treated to John Travolta and Benicio del Toro striding from their limo to walk the carpet for the premier of Savages. Being disdainful about the red carpet experience, as a fan of Pulp Fiction, Traffic and of course Saturday Night Fever, I couldn’t help but be a wee bit excited by the experience, although having recently read a review entitled ‘it’s a toss up who gives the worst performance in this flatulent bore of a film’ of Savages I was wondering if John and Benicio were feeling a little bit chagrined about the adulation they were receiving.

Zarautz

From San Sebastian it’s a pleasant 30 minute scenic train ride to the chilled coastal town of Zarautz.  One of the main disappointments from my previous time on crutches had been the inability to surf on one leg.   To redress this I’d booked in time in Zarautz, with its 3km of sandy beach front and multiple breaks, for bobbing round the ocean.

While we were here to surf it was hard not to follow what was a turbulent week in Spain with riots in Madrid while we were in the country.  The Basque region has been pushing for autonomy for decades and with the current economic turmoil and austerity measures there seems to be an increased passion for breaking away from Spain.  As a means of protest the whole Basque region went on strike on the day we were due to leave Zarautz.  We’d seen the posters around and the square we over looked was set to be the scene of demonstrations and marching.  After the riots in Madrid we weren’t quite sure what to expect. We hadn’t counted on the nature of the locals however and the small gathering came and shuffled off and with everything shut and the sun shining they went back to their prime pastimes of the sitting on the beach and promenading along the foreshore. My type of revolution. 

Given the difficulty of travelling and obtaining any services we ended up staying for another two very relaxing days in Zarautz.  Our pension was almost full for these two days and we were moved to the Harry Potter room, though instead of being under the stairs it was under the roofline and consequently I was able to fully stand in about a third of the room to peer at the sky from skylight in the roof. 

From Zarautz we headed back to Bilbao and onto Barcelona. I’ve been to Barcelona a number of times before and thoroughly enjoyed it, but our accommodation was in the midst of tourist central, surrounded by Irish bars and weekender stag and hens dos. After the previous week or so it was all a bit much and highlighted how much I’d enjoyed the return to northern Spain.