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We tend not to sit in one place for a week at a time very often. If you are going to sit for a while though then you should do it with good people in a really nice place. San Sebastian is a very nice spot to do so and our family are good people to do it with.
San Sebastian is also called Donostia. For a while, I had the impression that there were two cities very close to each other. It did dawn on me after a while that they were the same place and that Donostia is the Basque name for San Sebastian. They are doing a bit of renaming of streets here to reflect the Basque traditions. It can be confusing but it is a pretty sensible way of giving respect to a group that feels on the outside.
San Sebastian has been a holiday place for the rich and famous for a few centuries. Spanish kings, and I suppose various others, used to come here in the summer to soak up some rays and cavort. I am not sure whether kings and queens come here now but there are plenty of other visitors carrying
Beach
It could get pretty full on the tradition of soaking up rays and cavorting.
We moved up in class here for a while. The effect of joining our classy rellies for a couple of weeks. A very spacious and well appointed apartment ideally located in Plaza Zaragosa. Less than 100 metres to the beach, only a little further to the old town - with more tapas bars, restaurants and shops than you could possibly get to in a month of cavorting - and, most importantly for some, well stocked clothes, bag and shoe shops Some of these could also be found immediately downstairs.
One day we roused ourselves and took the trip for an hour or so to Bilbao and another Guggenheim Gallery. A building that is hard to describe. A massive structure covered almost entirely in titanium plate. It took 12 months negotiation between the architect (Frank Gehry) and the plate maker to produce titanium plate of the right thickness, colour, shading and shine. There was no mention of how long it took to actually produce the plate and fix it to the metal frame. A spectacular building that is itself a work of art. Some of the material exhibiited required a
Good Knees
Wanted to ride a horse but these weren't going anywhere level of understanding and appreciation greater than I possess but the exhibitions of Anish Kapoor and Henri Rousseau were very impressive and enjoyable. I wouldn't claim to have appreciated all of the shades of meaning that some of the analysis provided suggested were present, but a lot of Kapoor's work looked simply like a lot of fun.
We have eaten tapas before. We have even made them from recipe books. But the real thing is, as you would expect, better. And the Basque version, pinxtos, is also - I don't really know what the difference is yet but will report back in due course. We walked the streets of the old town, peering into bars at lunch time or later in the evening, sussing out the best tapas spread out along the bars. It is all about the same price - normally up to a couple of euros at lunch time but a little more expensive at night - often on small pieces of toasted baguette and with a mix of toppings that is often unusual. Cheap wine, good food and good company. Can you really ask for more?
Well, if you wanted to ask for more, then
you might look for a walk along the esplanade a little before sunset - which happens here at around 9.45pm at this time of the year. Most of the people had left the beach by this time but there were still a few people practising their football skills and a few lovers left over from those who descend on the beach in the afternoon engaged in a range of romantic activities. Some photogenic sunsets along here and nice places for a drink.
San Sebastian has been destroyed a number of times over the centuries so not a lot of the really old city remains. There is a variety of architectural styles exhibited along most of the streets, other than those in the old city where a consistent style has been maintained. While it is not a bad looking city, I don't think that you would come here for the architecture.
San Sebastian/Donostiea is in the centre of the Basque area. We climbed the main hill one day. A pretty easy walk with a well set up museum and exhibition at the top dealing with the old days of the place and a little more generally with the Basque
people and their traditions. The only Basque that I know personally was a newspaper reporter back in the NT. He would probably appreciate the flag that I now have in my possession - the Basque flag with Che as a centrepiece.
Like most people I suppose I know little about the Basque other than that, over a long period, the more militant among them have committed some atrocities where innocent people have been indiscriminately murdered. They are a distinct group of people with their own language. I understand that there is no migration myth in their history and that they claim to have come originally from this area of land. Taken to its logical conclusion that would mean that Africa has a competitor for the place that produced the first human beings. But whatever their origins they and their forebears have lived here for a long time and they seem to regard the Spanish - on one side of the border - and the French - on the other side - as interlopers.
As most of the world would appreciate, we have the FIFA World Cup on at the moment. We have access to a TV at the
For Adam
Not hard to keep up the challenge of finding him around here moment and I have the opportunity to see a little sport. So this post is just a little shorter than others have been. Those of you who have proper jobs can go back to work now. I have a football/soccer game to watch.
But just briefly while I am on that subject I should relate the story of the power failure that afflicted the room in our apartment where the TV was situated on the night that Espagna was playing. First, the lady in charge arrived and tried to fix the problem. The football hadn't started. She ran a cord in from another room for us. Then the electrician arrived. The game had started. He spent a good 20 minutes sorting out the issue, sneaking looks at the TV but still doing his job. And all of this happened between 8.00 and 9.30 pm on a Friday night. Dedication to duty I call it.
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