I had the absolutely wonderful opportunity to travel with my Spanish family this weekend for the first time, returning to País Vasco - the region where Alemana, Findlandesa and I visited Bilbao - but this time to see San Sebastián.
San Sebastián is a beautiful seaside city with canals, churches and a beach that draws crowds of surfers. We arrived Friday evening in time to take a nighttime walk through downtown, and see the elegant old buildings lit up. We stopped for pinchos, the tapas cousin that Basque country is known for.
We did the daytime version of our tour the next morning, walking along the canals and past the churches to see them in daylight.
We adventured across the border to the French side of Basque country to visit Saint Jean de Luz - giving me my 14th country and a rare opportunity to use my French in real life. Since that mostly involved saying "un verre de vin blanc, s'il vous plaît" and "merci" to the waiters, I was feeling pretty good about myself. ...That is until I panicked that I had misunderstood when I actually hadn't, and ended up ordering both a café au lait and coffee ice cream. Ha ha ha, oops. At least there are much worse mistakes I could have made than accidentally over-caffeinating myself!
We visited another French town called Biarritz after lunch to see more of the stunning coastline before heading back to Spain.
On our way home on Sunday we did a tour of the towns along the northern coast of Basque Country. We stopped in four little towns along the way - Lekeitio, Mundaka, San Juan and Bermeo - to simply walk around, take in the ambiance, drink coffee and enjoy the sun.
Doing 'nothing' without wasting time is something the Spanish have perfected, and I wish we did better in the states. The entire trip didn't really include any definitive activities - and yet we saw 7 different towns over two days at a relaxed pace and had valuable time together.
It was exactly what I wanted from my last weekend in Spain.
Sounds very nice.
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