The rest of Europe

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San Sebastian - 12 blissful days
Ah…San Sebastian. Twelve glorious days and nights of sun, surf, home-like accommodation, new friends, reunions with existing ones, film festival movies (in English!) and some of the best food I’ve eaten on my trip, which of course was a highlight!

San Sebastian, if you haven’t been before, is a coastal town on the north coast of Spain, about 20 mins from the French border. It has two main beaches; La Concha, a calm beach in a bay with a big island in the middle, and La Zurriola, ‘the cool beach’, a popular surfing beach and where most of the young people tend to hang out. The two beaches are 10 mins walking distance apart, and are separated by the old town of San Sebastian - the hub of the town, with an incredibly high concentration of tapas bars - called ‘pinchos’ in Basque, which is the region that San Sebastian is in.

The place I stayed was about a five minute walk from old town, and right in the centre of the shopping district (handy!). Called ‘SM31’ it was owned by a Spanish couple who had converted their flat into a three dorm hostel for the summer. Although small, Fran and Miguel were so friendly and the bonus of only having 17 beds in the whole place was that you tended to know everyone there, which made it feel more like home. I met some great people there, Em, who I’d already been travelling with on Busabout through Valencia and Madrid, was there half the time, then there was Ed and Tom, an Aussie and Welsh guy who had come to San Sebastian to teach English (but who also spoke Spanish - very handy to go out with!), a couple of Israeli girls who were very friendly, and countless others who passed through over the ten days I was there.

The activities I did in San Sebastian fell into three main categories, time spent in pinchos bars, churroserias and bars in general (probably best described as ‘eating’), beach time, and all the ‘other stuff’.

‘Other stuff’ included a few fun activities - I went off on a day trip to Biarritz, a beach town just over the French border. It’s a beautiful place to walk around - I walked about 2kms down a coastal path that took me past a cute port area, up to a café with great views of the coastline, and then to Cote des Basques, which is a surf beach, supposedly where surfing first started in Europe. It was great to sit there and watch the surfers for a while, there were so many of them and they were so good! From there I went up to a museum - not that I go to many of these now - but this was a chocolate museum so of course I couldn’t miss it. It was quite good too, I learnt about how the various components of the cocoa bean are split up and then mixed in the appropriate proportions to form the desired chocolate mix. Interesting.

Also on the ‘other stuff’ list was the three films I saw as part of the San Sebastian file festival. I saw two English films, ‘The Oxford Murders’ and ‘Happy-go-lucky’, the former was a maths based whodunit with Elijah Wood and a fairly mediocre script, the latter a weird film with a crazy ‘happy-go-lucky’ main character who didn’t really appeal to me. My favourite of the three though was Ben Stiller’s new film Tropic Thunder. I’m sure it’s been released in Oz by now, go and see it if you like Ben Stiller films. Have a drink or two before you go - it’ll make it funnier.

Then there was the beach. I only went surfing a few times in the end, each time I went though I really enjoyed it. There were a few days of almost complete calm, no good for surfing, then when I did some surf lessons I got a rash from my legs rubbing against a foam board…yeowch. I wore a full length wetsuit the next day and it felt like my legs were on fire! La Zurriola was a gorgeous beach though, if you ignored all the naked men and topless women you could have been on an Australian beach.

Lastly there was the food. The pinchos was exceptional. There were a few different ways to have it, depending on the bar. Usually it would just be sitting on the bar, with all the cigarette smoke wafting over it - would never pass food and safety laws back home! But you ate as much as you wanted, kept count and then paid at the end for what you’d eaten (the ‘honesty system’). The pinchos in these bars were usually things on bread or toothpicks. My favourites were the creamy crab mix on bread or sardines on a toothpick. There were also a few bars that served warm pinchos, particularly tortilla, which would also sit on the bar and get warmed up in the microwave when you ordered it. My favourite pinchos bar however was one where you had to order off the menu. ‘La Cuchara del san Telmo’ was packed almost every time I was in there. The dishes they served were like mini fine dining meals and according to some other travellers I met was better than some of the food you get in Michelin star restaurants. By the time I’d left San Seb. I’d been there four times, and tried most of the dishes on their 15 item menu. My favourite was the ribs, but all of the dishes were melt in your mouth wonderful. The first time I went I didn’t bother with the English menu, just took a punt and ordered off the Basque one, I had a couple of interesting things, including fois gras (quite tasty, but not the greatest) and Iberian pigs ear. The meat on the ear was tender but there was a lot of cartilage and you could still see the hair in the shaft of the ear drum. Certainly a more unusual culinary experience. Last but not least there was the churros, I had them every couple of days but they never tasted better than when my friend Damien and I ran through town during a rain storm to take refuge from the rain! Definitely a snack suited to cold dreary weather…and of course the arrival of cold dreary weather was not something I was looking forward to - the end of summer!

Lisbon - not all about the food!
When I first arrived in Lisbon I couldn’t quite place Portugal as a country. I was expecting it to be similar to Spain, but it’s definitely got it’s own identity and distinct culture. Which I suppose I should have expected!

With regards to the title of this section, I ate well in Lisbon, don’t get me wrong, the pastel de nata (Portuguese custard tart) and Ginjinya (cherry liqueur with real, incredibly alcoholic, cherries in it) were great discoveries and are probably worth writing more about. But in response to the feedback that I’m giving the impression of ‘eating my way around Europe’, I’m going to ease up on the food writing and focus on the highlight of Lisbon for me - the music! There were two notable occasions where music featured.

Firstly, there was a chance discovery. While walking through town on the way to taste Ginjinya, I heard the sound of an orchestra. This has happened to me a number of times in my travels, usually I walk around the corner and find that there’s a CD shop or similar playing something orchestral. On this occasion though I walked around the corner and found a real orchestra playing in a little square! Turns out it was the Lisbon Symphony, playing a piece I knew but couldn’t remember the name of (like most classical music!) - I worked it out eventually, it was Beethoven’s 1st, and it was lovely.

Secondly, there was Fado - Portuguese folk music. There are lots of Fado restaurants in Lisbon, we went to one in the Biarro Alto district - a grungy old district which is a popular night spot with loads of bars and restaurants. The show we saw had three different singers, a young lady, an older lady and a guy. It’s a really different style of music and was refreshing to listen to, it reminded me a bit of gypsy / Romanian folk music, with melodic acoustic guitar and mandolin accompaniment. Fado or ‘fate’ music as it translates, was typically sung when lovers were separated for some reason, eg. war. So a lot of it is very melancholy, but there was also a number of more upbeat quirky songs, one amusing one required the audience to make kissing sounds, which, given it became apparent at that point that only a few of the audience members actually understood what was being sung, meant that about three people in the crowd actually made kissing sounds. The dinner itself was ok - I tried bachalau (cod) for the first time - a very popular meal in Portugal.

Oporto - maybe better as o o! Port!
My stay in Oporto was lovely, a luxurious little holiday and a nice break from the ‘travelling’ which, anyone who’s ‘travelled’ before can attest to, is not really a holiday, it’s an experience! I guess the main reason Porto was more like a holiday was the accommodation difference. I’d been staying in hostels, which I suppose usually get about one star. Hotel Melia Ghia had four stars, was perched on a hilltop with magnificent views overlooking the Duoro river and, wait for it, had white fluffy bathrobes. Very exciting when for the last two months you’ve been using a travel towel, or at best threadbare hotel towels. Very exciting.

The other good part of Porto was that there wasn’t a lot of touristy sights to see, in fact the main attraction, surprise surprise, is Port tasting. Which suited me perfectly! My favourite afternoon in Porto started with a river cruise on the Duoro river, with views of all the six bridges that cross the Duoro in Porto, all of which are spectacular, not because of their age or architecture so much but because of their size. The banks of the Duoro are steep and the bridges link the tops of the banks, so they sit majestically high above the waterline and generally look cool. After the cruise we went for a cellar tour and tasting at Croft caves (cellars), the tour was a little lacking in information, but the port tasting was great and I tried my favourite of all the ports I had in Porto - a 1980 tawny. Also good about Croft was the availability of chocolate matched to the Port. Tasty! After Croft, Damien and I hopped to a couple more cellars, doing another tour (very comprehensive) and tasting at Calem, where I got a bit snap happy with the camera but at least got a good shot that showed the difference between ruby, white and tawny, the three main types of port. Then it was on to ‘Vinelogia’ which had designed special tastings to assist with understanding the three ports, which, as previously stated, were tawny, which is aged in small barrels so it picks up wood flavours and also is more brown in colour, white and ruby, which are both aged in big vats, retain their fruit flavours and are drunk youngish (usually after a couple of years), and tawny is aged for at least five years. We selected the “Academic” tasting with two whites, two rubys and two tawnys including a 10y/o.

After that tasting we finished the evening with a meal of suckling pig at the restaurant just around the corner, then we pottered off back to the hotel - ready for another day of tasting the next day!

Finally….France
Ah, France France France, what could I ever do without it. I finished my European trip with six glorious days in the land of wine, cheese and crepes, starting with two days in Bordeaux. While I was there I did a wine tour (naturally), including a most impressive wine tasting in Clos le Madeline in the Saint Etienne appellation. Impressive not so much because of the wine (although it was good to taste some French wine that cost more than 4 euro a bottle!) but because they got our whole bus tour group to taste the wine properly - ie. Cupping your hand around the wine to warm it, then swirling it to aerate it, smelling the aroma, and then tasting it. The vineyard itself was very picturesque - the grapes in some places were still on the vines.

From Bordeaux I went to Paris for three days. Paris just keeps getting better the more I go. This was the fourth time I’d been, so I thought it was about time I buckled and went to the Louvre.

I set a full day aside for the task, as I figured it would be something I only did once. So it was mid-morning, with touch screen audio guide at the ready that I embarked on my Louvre mission. It was a great mission too - I did five hours of audio guided tours, which meant I saw many works I wouldn’t have found if I’d done it on my own. Of the most famous ones, Mona Lisa was hideously overrated and my least favourite, whereas Venus de Milo was exceptional - I want her abs!! And while I saw loads of fantastic stuff, including the medieval foundations in the basement of the gallery, my two stand out favourites were Psyche and Cupid by Canova and the Seated Scribe. Psyche and Cupid because it was such a pretty sculpture, and the Seated Scribe because of its condition - it still had colour on it, and it’s 4000 years old! Impressive.

I crossed a few more typical Parisian things off my list too - saw “the thinker” in the quaint Rodin gardens, admired the majestic stained glass windows in Saint Chappelle, and checked out the crown of thorn relics in the Notre Dame. For a bit of culture I bought a five euro ticket to Verdi’s Rigoletto at Opera Bastille. Five euro doesn’t get you a seat of course, but the standing room was comfy and it was good to see an opera in Europe again! But I couldn’t leave Europe without one more nice meal. Of crepes. Creperies are harder to find in Paris than you might think, but after a bit of a hunt I found Crepery Cluny in the Latin Quarter, and had a fitting last meal of ham, cheese and mushroom gallette, with a stewed apple crepe for dessert. I might have also had a cheeky chocolate éclair for an extra dessert too ☺ but what a great way to end my holiday.

Which brings me to now! After going to 31 cities in two and a half months, I was happy to get back to London a little over two weeks ago. With a bit of luck I’ve managed to find both a nice place to live (near London Bridge and very close to the tube) and a marketing job. Guess all I need to do now is plan my next trip away! Until then, I hope you’re all happy and well. Kt.

P.S. You might have noticed photos missing from this blog - turns out, as great as my Mac is, it's not compatible with the photo loading program. I've loaded about 240 of my photos onto Facebook now though - e-mail me if you'd like the links to see them - and if you want to see all 1300 photos I somehow managed to take you'll have to wait until you see me next 😊

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