| The bridge towers were topped with impressive sea-horses! |
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| Erin's San Sebastian Journals 6-18-02 After a really long night of next to no sleep, I woke up with burning eyes around 5am and couldn't sleep again. So I started watching the dim, then more visible sights out the train windows. The countryside we were riding through was really gorgeous, although I noted that it was overcast - shoot!!! Glenn wouldn't be happy about that, at a beach town, no less!!! But the hills and greenery were really pretty and I hoped we'd still get some good relaxing time in San Sebastian. We were supposed to get in around 7:05am, and instead ended up waiting near the door with our packs on for almost half an hour. The train was late and the conductor would only tell me that San Sebastian was the next stop. Finally we arrived and planned to head out to find a place. It was still really early, so we were worried that we'd have to wait a long time to get a place, but there were several people at the station soliciting visitors for their rooms, and the third one was a winner. She had a place for 30 Euros a night for the 2 of us, and we went with her to check out the rooms before agreeing. It was totally redone, and very clean, and looked quiet. We accepted her offer, then left our bags in the kitchen while the previous couple left and she cleaned the room for us. We went to find breakfast, and ended up with a couple of donuts and some coffee and juice. We wandered back around 9am as we'd agreed, and checked in, then both of us rinsed off as we felt all sticky from the train ride. Then, we napped. Yes, I needed it! A few hours later I felt much refreshed and HUNGRY again, so we headed out into the town to see what internet resources we could find and how close the beach was. Of course by now, it was too late for lunch and too early for tapas, but we did have one nice lady direct us to a burger joint that would still serve food at the weird hour of 4pm. The burgers were good, and we'd seen a couple of internet spots on the way over, so we turned our attention then to the beach. We saw a few people sunbathing in the overcast afternoon, and a few real weirdos swimming - it's COLD, dummies! Then we went into the old town part, and were charmed by the many shops and cute stuff. We even saw something Glenn liked and thought about buying, which is rare. We talked to the shop clerk about coming back for it, and she told us that there would be a general strike in Spain over the next 2 days, particularly in San Sebastian on the 19th, where no shops or restaurants would be open in town! We hadn't known this, and quickly decided we'd better get some rations of food into our room in case the next day yielded no restaurant opportunities. On the way to Information for a map and some details on the strike, we stopped into a game room and played some skee-ball/bowling, air hockey and hoops games. He beat my butt at all three. Then we headed on to Information. They didn't have much to offer other than the map, so we quickly went on to find groceries, and then took our haul back to the hotel. There, we relaxed for a while and thought about what to do for dinner, and soon met the other guests of our hotel (only 2 other rooms). There were a couple of girls from New York in one room, and an unfortunate lady from New Zealand in the other. I say unfortunate because she'd been pretty miserable in Spain and Portugal due to being unable to withdraw cash on either of her cards. Most places don't take credit cards, so she'd been having lots of trouble. We invited her to dinner so she could pay with her credit card and we'd give her the cash for our portion. We went around the corner and had a pretty good Chinese meal, all the while listening to her tales of woe. I know how much that annoys Glenn, so I kept trying to steer her back to happy memories of Greece (her travels have been remarkably similar to ours). But after repeated failures, Glenn was starting to poke me under the table to get out of there, so we wrapped up the dinner, paid and left. On our way back to the hotel, we split up with her and went to make a 'sorry dad' phone call - we'd missed Father's Day and hadn't called Glenn's dad! We found a booth in a plaza and crammed into it, then dialed up. We reached his mom but dad wasn't there, so he chatted with mom for a while. It'll be great to see our parents again in a couple of weeks! After the call, it was pretty late, so we went back to the room and passed out. |