Donostia/ San Sebastian

Feb. 16-19 San Sebastian By Eric

We couldn't find any official border crossing station at the small bridge where we crossed into Spain. Suddenly all the signs were in Spanish. Joan wanted to find a place that would stamp our passports, so we got directions to the customs house, a few kilometers up the river, to where a big highway crossed the border. The customs guards were nice but they wouldn't stamp our passports either. There's no such thing as passport control between European Union countries.

The first 20km in Spain turned out to be the exact opposite of the last 20km in France. On the French side of the border, we had extremely quiet little roads and bike trails. But in Spain, we couldn't find any back roads. The only road into San Sebastian was a very busy and loud highway with a skinny shoulder. We passed ugly apartment buildings, strip malls, and heavy industrial areas full of trucks. (Thankfully the cars still treated us well, just as they had in France.)

As we got closer to San Sebastian, things got worse. The clouds turned black and it started to rain. Though it was just early afternoon, many cars had their headlights on. Graffiti was everywhere, particularly on the road signs. Basque separatists had blotted out all the Spanish names, leaving only the Basque names which usually weren't on our map.

In some city on the outskirts we found ourselves in a gritty traffic jam on an interminable, Industrial Revolution-era bridge next to a greasy rail yard. Frequent old concrete telephone poles made the ancient sidewalk impassable to our wide bikes. It seemed like everywhere we looked we saw gray -- road, sky, steel girders, railings, warehouses, trucks, tangled wires criss-crossing the sky.

It turned out we were in a bicycle-unfriendly urban ring like the one we found on the way to Bordeaux (see France Chapter 5), but worse. This urban ring tricked us onto a freeway when we made the mistake of actually following the road signs. Then going down a big hill on the freeway, where we were explicitly forbidden to ride, Joan ran over something big. I saw something hanging from her chain. After we got through a tunnel, I told her to stop and not to pedal. Good thing. We found a foot-long piece of barbed wire stuck in the chain.

Barbed wire. It seemed so appropriate, as if placed there to keep us out.

But that must have been the last line of defense. Shortly after that, we got off the freeway and onto a city street with an excellent, tree-lined bike lane. Ten minutes later we happened across the tourist information office in the center of town. In a couple days, San Sebastian became one of our favorite cities ever.

Even in the rain San Sebastian looked great. It had wonderful town squares with lots of benches. There was no graffiti at all. We had some trouble finding a hotel, but on our third try we discovered one of the great hotel finds of our trip: Pension La Perla. We had a cozy room on the second floor (first floor if you're European) with a balcony. It was run by a very nice woman. We kept our bikes in the lobby.

San Sebastian is divided into a newer city and an ancient section. The north part of San Sebastian has old medieval narrow streets at odd angles and the southern part has wide boulevards in a grid. The old part is quaint, but the wide boulevards get lots more light on gray, rainy days -- the way it was during are entire visit.

We had a great time. For starters, we quickly discovered that unlike France, Spain has affordable food and drink. We ate at tapas bars two or three times a day, stuffing ourselves silly with Spanish tortillas (a thick omelet, with pieces of potato inside), olives, and lots of little sandwiches topped with shrimp or chorizo or anything. We washed it all down with canas, or beers on tap. After a whole tapas feast, the bill would be around 1200 Pesetas. When we were there, it was 150 Pesetas to the dollar, so that works out to about US$8! We were in heaven.

The first day we found an Internet cafe (behind the big cathedral) and a bookstore, where we bought Spanish language primers. We spent that day and the next three days studying the books, over tapas, or in the morning, over coffees.

Nights we went walking on the sea wall, along the city's amazing beach. It's called Playa de la Concha because it's shaped like a shell, with high cliffs at either side. It seems like half the town turns out at night to walk along the wall, or on the beach. During the day, kids play soccer on the beach when the tide is out.

Those days were some of the most relaxing on our whole trip. They were right up there with the weeks we spent studying French while lazing around Kathmandu.

One night, we went to a salsa concert in a huge old theater. It started off with a guitarist-singer who sort of reminded us of early Paul Simon. Then came a 20? piece band that just blew us all away.

We had only reserved two nights at our hotel, and we wanted to stay two more. But the hotel was booked. Luckily one of the people who had reserved decided to leave early. If you're coming to San Sebastian, remember to call ahead!

Anyway, we loved the place so much that we seriously considered ending our whole tour right there. We were thinking about renting a house and just relaxing for months. It was very, very hard to leave. We promised ourselves that if we didn't like what we saw once we left, we would hurry back. It turned out the rest of Spain was great too, but it wouldn't have been a bad place to stay, either.

Next: Spain's North Coast Highway

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