Over the border to Spain - taking the long road (22 October 2024)

The entrance to the bay of San Sebastian

Donastia/San Sebastian is a Basque city on the coast about 60kms from Bayonne.  It is connected by  road, bus and rail.  It has reputation for great food, apparently the greatest concentration of Michelin starred restaurants in Spain.  It also has a very good beach which attracts thousands of tourists during the summer. 

 

I had heard and read about the city years ago and given we were so close it seemed sensible to visit it.  I took the “eco” route to city which involved driving past Biarritz, St-Jean-de-Luz and Henday before crossing the border formed by a river at Henday.  It took us over an hour to get to Henday due to traffic and speed limits.  Once we got across the border it was a bit quicker.  The GPS took us to the main tourist area where we quickly found a car park in yet another pristine car parking building. 

We had coffee at the corner of this building

 

After a coffee we went wandering through the old part of the town.  Like all the towns we have visited the city centres are largely car free and they are clean and brimming with life.  Perhaps some of the business owners should go to European cities and see what it is like when people are the priority not cars. 

A rather attractive bridge which we crossed to enter the centre

 

It was lunchtime and we went looking for Pinxtos or Tapas as that is the specialty of the town.  We soon found one that was full of people so figured it must be a good place to eat.  We made our selection and enjoyed a variety of foods that we had not had before. I would have liked some hot things but when I figured out what we needed to do it was too late as we were full.  Later we discovered many other places which had hot dishes available to choose at the counter. 

Street scene

 

The city centre is under a decent sized hill which we climbed to get view of the ocean and city. It was fortified and now has religious statue on top of it.  The main beach is in a bay that is guarded by two large hills.  It would have made it a formidable place to attack in the past. 

Boat harbour
 Before we knew it, it was time go back to Bayonne.  The first challenge was to find the car and the entrance which we came out of.  In our first attempt I failed to find the car so we went back to the surface and located another entrance. Finally we found the car.  Thank goodness for automatic unlocking which blinks the lights!

 

I decided I wanted a quick drive back to Bayonne rather than the longer drive it had taken us to get there.  That meant taking the autoroute and paying tolls.  It more that halved the travel time.  Most of the additional time was the slow travel out of San Sebastian and then the delays  getting into Bayonne.  

 

It was interesting going into Spain.  We all noticed a change in atmosphere.  It was difficult to put it down to anything but I think part of it was that people were not as friendly.  That was not helped by us having very few appropriate Spanish words.  Somehow the vibrancy of France was not there I felt.  Perhaps after a summer of tourists they were over us.  

The statue of a Christ like figure

A memorial to those who were executed by Franco
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Cannons

The beach

More street scenes


Our tapas
 


A square we came upon

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