Blogs from San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain, Europe - page 3

Departure mode without speaking. Vast majority of preparation had been done the evening before. Each of us knew what to do. Loaded up, walked to Atocha Renfe underground and 25 minutes later we were at Chamartin and in no time comfortably in our spacious seats waiting for the train to depart. No stress. We drifted in and out of ‘doziness’ even though we had had very little sleep during the night. The countryside consisted of rolling, undulating hills with farmland plus wide flood plains and narrow steep valleys with the customary village clinging to the sides, interspersed with the occasional large town. Numerous tunnels were passed through ranging from a few seconds to 8 minutes. We were very pleased to reach San Sebastian and on stepping only a few metres from the station we were greeted ... read more

Travelling again today, picked up at our apartment (transfers went very smoothly here) at 7.30am (daylight saving started yesterday, so dark) and off to the airport. Managed to check in and find the gate for our Vueling flight to Bilbao. Short flight, very squeezy!! Landed in Bilbao, pouring rain, and then the fun started - driving in the hire car, a Renault Scenic - feels huge! Drove into Bilbao (airport is outside town) to check out the Guggenheim museum - from the outside only, closed on Mondays. There was one sculpture outside - "Puppy" - a dog made of flowers. Apparently it has been there since 1992, and the flowers are actually planted, and growing! Got very wet (even with rain jackets and umbrellas as it was also very windy) walking around the outside of the ... read more

Day 11 We had a little sleep in after the celebrations for dad's birthday. Mum went to buy us some food so that we could have breakfast in the apartment and plan our day. Because the weather was going to be hot and sunny (27 degrees) we decided to make it a beach day. So we headed off to La Concha! One of the best beaches in Europe. We went swimming and built barriers to protect our castles and built a bath that unfortunately didn't get any water. We went on another carousel next to the beach. After that mum promised we could go through to scrolled I got banana brownie and zoe got chocolate mint. For dinner we went to a stand up bar it was rely delicious. We walked home along the beach then ... read more

Day 9 dad's last day in his 40s We caught the metro train and used our very last ticket. That means we used 20 tickets each while in Barcelona. Zoe and I know the metro very well now so we showed everyone where to go. We caught the train to a 4d movie about Gaudi. It was really cool. If you don't know what 4d is, it is including 4 of your 5 senses. It had air and water mist shooting out of the seat in front of you. We then went to the main railway station and put our bags in a locker and explored a bit. When we got on the train we were told we would be on it for seven hours. We did some coloring and played games. After 5 long hours ... read more

From Nice to San Sebastian, Bex and I were on the 'ole Flix Bus for 6 hours. We arrived at about 10.10pm. Google maps informed us we were but a mere 12 minutes walk from our hostel we were staying at. In good spirits and feeling excited about being in the heart of San Sebastian at night and seeing it all lit up, we started walking towards our accommodation. We should have known things would of course not be so simple. The warning bell started ringing when we walked down the final street towards our hostel. Drunk people were everywhere. It was a difficult road to navigate, made even more difficult when Google informed us that we had arrived, and we were unable to see anything remotely resembling a helpful sign. There were no indications that ... read more