San Sebastian

Ahhh, San Sebastian.  A belle époque European beach city you might think of in the 1950's or 60's, with the bright blue water, the high rise unchanging resorts on the waterfront, the outdoor cafes on the promenade...just pure nostalgia and happiness and beauty in my opinion.  We enjoyed two quiet low key days here full of eating and drinking and beach time, along with some hiking and a stop by the city aquarium cause I'm a sucker for that stuff.  So this was basically like every other part of our trip.

View from our pretty hotel room.

View on the beach.  No nudists out this time.

More flowers and palm trees and city centres.

I'm clearly a sucker for old school government buildings.

A blurry sunset picture over the harbor.

We hiked up to the "mountain" on the east side of the bay one day.  There's a large statue of Jesus that looks over the city, kinda like in Rio.

Two sweaty hikers.

Peace!  

Now onto the aquarium!  This is a huge whale skeleton because evidently the whaling industry used to be huge in San Sebastian.

A trippy light tank full of jelly fish.  

Starfish!

They had a MASSIVE tank where all kinds of huge fish swam in front of you and over you, and this 8-foot long bull shark kept passing over me.  And I got scared.

A blurry picture of a huge eel, like the one in The Little Mermaid.  No thank you.

A crazy cuttlefish!

Another giant eel hiding in a clay pot.
(Remember in Super Mario Brothers with N64 and there was an underwater level where you had to lure this giant eel out of the ship so Mario could get in?  That's what this reminds me of.)

I don't know what these guys are but they are about the size of a large straw and they kept poking their "heads" in and out of their hidey-holes.  Kinda funny.

Tons of Nemos!

Relaxing at a Gintoneria - these Spaniards LOVE their gin and tonics.  And that means I do too now.

And lastly...our pintxos!  We went on a pinxtos crawl through the old town and ate a couple bites and drank some wine at each place before moving on to the next ones.  It was so fun and so cheap and so delicious and filling!

If you ever find yourself in Northern Spain and are looking for a bit of relaxing and great food, San Sebastian is your place.  Besides all of the pintxos we mentioned above (Rick Steves has a great little crawl route that we took), they also have the highest number of Michelin stars per capita of any city in the world.  Overall, it was a great place to visit for a little fun in the sun!