An uneventful morning flight took us to the Bilbao airport with a transfer by bus to beautiful San Sebastian for the beginning of our official VBT walking tour. The Hotel Londres y Inglaterra is a fantastic old hotel, obviously built for English vacationers at the turn of the 19th century, updated and lovely. Our room overlooked La Concha beach with its elegant promenade for walking and with great bike lanes. We decided to grab something simple to eat in the hotel bar with a view of the beach, and then take a short and lovely walk along the promenade up into the old city, where we were instantly arrested by a gorgeous pastry shop. We bought the most delicious almond cake EVER, and gobbled it down right there (well, I did take a quarter back to the hotel, but never did have time to eat it). At 4 that afternoon, we met our guides and fellow walkers for a brief orientation meeting. David is a full-time adventure tour guide of all descriptions, born in Cape Verde, but grew up and is still from Lisbon, Portugal. Txaro, (pronounced “Charo”—more about the Basque language later) his co-guide, is a native of the Basque Country who spent her entire childhood in the United States, returning to her home town at age 17. She has retained her American accent and owns and runs an English school in addition to her tour guide gigs. The group turned out to be 20 in all, variously from Florida, California, Washington State, Oregon, South Carolina, Maryland (eastern shore), and Arizona. Most were couples, with one pair of sisters, and one pair of best friends traveling together. The average age of the group was probably 65-70.
After the meeting we ventured out again into the old city, as usual, all pedestrian narrow streets with shops and restaurants on the ground floors and apartments above with colorful flowery window boxes. We went into a restaurant recommended by the hotel, only to be turned away initially. When we told them we would only be an hour, they showed us to a great table for two near a group of our other fellow travelers who got a table in the same way. Locals, of course, eat very late and so the tables were reserved for them. Often the restaurants don’t even open until 8 or 9PM, but this resturant was in the back of a busy and crowded tapas bar (pintxos in Basque, pronounced “pinchos”) and was open at 7. Seems smart to me, as there were plenty of people (tourists) like us who wanted a full meal that would terminate before midnight. We had a delicious meal of fish and salad and I unknowingly ordered a glass of white wine that is unique and famous to the region we were visiting. It’s called txokoli (pronounced, of course, “chocoli”—beginning to see the pattern?). It’s not too dry, has a little effervescence and quickly became my go-to wine for the whole trip.
After a much-needed night’s rest from the hectic pace in Madrid, we gathered in the lobby for our first official walk of the tour. On a bright sunny morning, we walked along the promenade toward a palace of Isabella II who wanted private access directly to the beach, so she had a hill built for the hoi-poloi to walk to so she could pass directly via a tunnel to her little spot of private beach. We continued around the bay to meet the van. On each day of our tour, Txaro and David alternated days, one walking with us, and the other in the van, our support vehicle. So every morning we had a snack break in the middle of our walk. They put out on the back of the van a positively wonderful spread of fresh and dried fruits, nuts, cookies, granola bars, rice cakes, juices, water and dark chocolate. So we stood around and munched away to get fortified to walk up to a funicular at the bottom of Monte Igueldo on the far west side of the bay. The red funicular cars looked old fashioned but were comfortable and trundled us up to a village/amusement park (complete with a House of Horrors), and a very fancy hotel. After a brief opportunity for photo ops and a bathroom break, back down we rode in the funicular to continue our walk back around the Concha Bay beach, past the hotel and up into the old city. The whole group stopped at a pintxos bar for a snack before a choice of climbing a big hill to Castillo de la Monte, a fortification built to protect San Sebastian during the Middle Ages. On the top of the hill also stands a Franco-built statue of Jesus (controversial to the locals of course, who didn’t need concrete statues imposed on the natural beauty of their bay). David said it might be taken down some day, but for now it remains keeping its eye on the frolicking beach-goers below. We chose to skip the climb to the castle and Jesus and head back to the hotel for a little rest before the evening festivities.
So, we gathered at 6PM for what we thought would be a quick aperitif before the group dinner in the hotel, but not so fast. We drank and chatted for about an hour and then Txaro began passing around a clipboard chart for selecting our courses for dinner. There were at least 6 choices for the 1st course, 8 choices for the entrée and four or five for desert. You can imagine how long it took for 20 people to look them over, think about it and check off their selections! I thought it was great that they were able to basically offer us the entire menu ahead of time, but some others grumbled that it was ridiculous that we were offered choices at all! Joe and I figured out that the over-long “cocktail hour” was because the restaurant didn’t actually start serving until after 8. Dinner was fine and sociable as we began to get to know our guides and a few of our new traveling companions. It was only as dinner finished, close to 11 o’clock, that we were told our morning would begin by having our bags ready outside our door by 7:30. Yikes. Several people expressed mild outrage that we weren’t told earlier, as if we would have spent any part of our last day in San Sebastian pre-packing. We are pretty much used to even earlier calls on our tandem trips, so we just roll with it.
After the meeting we ventured out again into the old city, as usual, all pedestrian narrow streets with shops and restaurants on the ground floors and apartments above with colorful flowery window boxes. We went into a restaurant recommended by the hotel, only to be turned away initially. When we told them we would only be an hour, they showed us to a great table for two near a group of our other fellow travelers who got a table in the same way. Locals, of course, eat very late and so the tables were reserved for them. Often the restaurants don’t even open until 8 or 9PM, but this resturant was in the back of a busy and crowded tapas bar (pintxos in Basque, pronounced “pinchos”) and was open at 7. Seems smart to me, as there were plenty of people (tourists) like us who wanted a full meal that would terminate before midnight. We had a delicious meal of fish and salad and I unknowingly ordered a glass of white wine that is unique and famous to the region we were visiting. It’s called txokoli (pronounced, of course, “chocoli”—beginning to see the pattern?). It’s not too dry, has a little effervescence and quickly became my go-to wine for the whole trip.
After a much-needed night’s rest from the hectic pace in Madrid, we gathered in the lobby for our first official walk of the tour. On a bright sunny morning, we walked along the promenade toward a palace of Isabella II who wanted private access directly to the beach, so she had a hill built for the hoi-poloi to walk to so she could pass directly via a tunnel to her little spot of private beach. We continued around the bay to meet the van. On each day of our tour, Txaro and David alternated days, one walking with us, and the other in the van, our support vehicle. So every morning we had a snack break in the middle of our walk. They put out on the back of the van a positively wonderful spread of fresh and dried fruits, nuts, cookies, granola bars, rice cakes, juices, water and dark chocolate. So we stood around and munched away to get fortified to walk up to a funicular at the bottom of Monte Igueldo on the far west side of the bay. The red funicular cars looked old fashioned but were comfortable and trundled us up to a village/amusement park (complete with a House of Horrors), and a very fancy hotel. After a brief opportunity for photo ops and a bathroom break, back down we rode in the funicular to continue our walk back around the Concha Bay beach, past the hotel and up into the old city. The whole group stopped at a pintxos bar for a snack before a choice of climbing a big hill to Castillo de la Monte, a fortification built to protect San Sebastian during the Middle Ages. On the top of the hill also stands a Franco-built statue of Jesus (controversial to the locals of course, who didn’t need concrete statues imposed on the natural beauty of their bay). David said it might be taken down some day, but for now it remains keeping its eye on the frolicking beach-goers below. We chose to skip the climb to the castle and Jesus and head back to the hotel for a little rest before the evening festivities.
So, we gathered at 6PM for what we thought would be a quick aperitif before the group dinner in the hotel, but not so fast. We drank and chatted for about an hour and then Txaro began passing around a clipboard chart for selecting our courses for dinner. There were at least 6 choices for the 1st course, 8 choices for the entrée and four or five for desert. You can imagine how long it took for 20 people to look them over, think about it and check off their selections! I thought it was great that they were able to basically offer us the entire menu ahead of time, but some others grumbled that it was ridiculous that we were offered choices at all! Joe and I figured out that the over-long “cocktail hour” was because the restaurant didn’t actually start serving until after 8. Dinner was fine and sociable as we began to get to know our guides and a few of our new traveling companions. It was only as dinner finished, close to 11 o’clock, that we were told our morning would begin by having our bags ready outside our door by 7:30. Yikes. Several people expressed mild outrage that we weren’t told earlier, as if we would have spent any part of our last day in San Sebastian pre-packing. We are pretty much used to even earlier calls on our tandem trips, so we just roll with it.
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