i guess kit can be right about some things

And San Sebastian is one of them. My computer is up and running so round 2 on San Sebastian post...go! Last weekend I went with Allison visit my good friend Kit and San Sebastian/Donostia in Pais Vasco. It was one of the places in Spain that I have been looking forward to goingo to since I had heard such good things about the city and more importantly, the food. I mean Anthony Bourdain wanted to live there in his alternate life, enough said. I knew it was going to be a good weekend when on the bus they played two movies from the last 5 years hooray! We arrived in Bilbao Friday night and Kit met us at the bus station to take us to her apartment. We visited Bilbao last year but it was nice to see where she lived even if just for a night. We woke up early to catch the bus to San Sebastian, happy with the good weather and con ganas to eat!! San Sebastian is very well know for the quality of its pinxtos, the basque version of tapas. We arrived in the morning and quickly decided priority number one at 12 pm, get the best gelato in San Sebastian duh. We then walked to bask in sunshine (which was lucky because it rains a lot in the north) and see the beach. San Sebastian is around a beach that is shaped like semi-circle with two mountains at the end of each side of the beach. As you can imagine, it is georgeous! We strolled along the beach to go see the Peinedel viento the well known sculpture by basque artist

Eduardo Chillida. They are built into the rocks that surround boarder of the city and are absolutely amazing.

It is also one of the places that inspired us to take cheesy photos like this one:

After walking a half hour to see the sculptures we made out way back into the city and it was time for our first stop for eating lunch, yay! Since we wanted to take advantage of the beautiful weather we stopped to get sandwiches at Juanxtos and have a picnic on the beach. It was so nice to have warm weather randomly in February to cure the winter doldrums. We ate our delicious sandwiches and then wandered over to play in a sand dune for a while. The kids next to us were really jealous of the air we got on those dunes. Who says white girls can't jump?

We wanted to climb one of the mountains to watch the sunset over the city. We huffed and puffed our way up the steep steps to set up and see the sunset. It was nice at first but nothing special, we were about ready to pack up and call it quits when Allison convinced us to stay just a little bit longer. The saying is true, good things come to those who wait and we saw a breathtakingly beautiful sunset. The weekend was off to a great start and it was only about to get better with Kit's pintxo tour of San Sebastian. Basically one of the reason's I had come. The pintxo apocalypse was a mix of the Anthony Bourdain tour and Kit's favourite spots. And the food was out of this world good. We started off eating Tigres mussels at La Mejillonera that were covered in an amazing tomato sauce. Then it was off to La Cuchara de San Telmo where we had a delicious risotto, steak and then it came down from heaven. A delicious buttery and perfectly cooked foie in an apple compote. I had never tried foie before and what a great start! Then we moved onto Hazea where Anthony Bourdain had pinxtos with 2 of the famous chefs from San Sebastian. Fantastic. Finally to Zeruko where we ate morcilla de burgos with pistachos, queso de la tetilla, and brie with you guessed it...more foie! Full and extremely happy, we stumbled out into the streets to find low and behold there was a festival in the Plaza Mayor! There was a parade, costumes, singing, and cute little basque children. Tired and happy we went to bed dreaming of churros and chocolate, which we would have for breakfast the next morning. Mmmmmmm. On Sunday there was more ice cream, more sun, the Cathedral, more mussels and saying goodbye to Allison. Kit and I noticed that the waves were really strong and crashing up against the city walls. So we walked out to los Peines del Viento to see the waves crashing up against them. Chillida also made holes into the floor of the walkway so that when the waves were big the water would shoot up like a gyser. To finish out of the last part of the vacation we had more foie, pintxos, went to a basque independence bar (yeah that was ummm interesting) ate more churros and got one last Juantxos sandwich for the bus ride back to Madrid. Could I ask for a better weekend? Food, good friends, and sun. Nope