Saint Emilion to San Sebastián

France and Spain Trip: Day Two: Saint Emilion to San Sebastián (via Saint Jean de Luz)

We woke up and dilly dallied - as became the motto for this trip - before meeting our Airbnb host, Emeline, checking out of the Airbnb, and eating omelettes for breakfast at a restaurant in town. 

We finally hit the road around noon and drove for hours, mastering the tolls as we went (it was tricky to figure out at first). We stopped in Saint Jean de Luz, wandered along the beach and also glimpsed a beautiful view of the river. I swam in the ocean for a while before we walked through the town, where I bought macarons and tried a quite disappointing crepe, while mom bought espadrilles and a beach blanket. Fascinated by all the options of espadrilles, she could have shopped for days.

Needing to hit the road again, we found our car and finished the drive to San Sebastián (Saint Sebastián in French and Donostia in Basque).

In San Sebastián, we waited for our Airbnb host to come let us in (it was a company renting out the apartment, and I do wonder how many locals struggle to find affordable housing in San Sebastián or if it’s primarily a resort town anyway). This is something you constantly hear about with Airbnb and since up to this point I’ve only rented rooms in people’s houses, I really had no basis to judge this. In Saint Emilion, the Airbnb was in the center of town but also seemed to mostly be in an area that attracted tourists.

It looked like the elevator doors were locked, so we climbed seven flights of stairs up to the apartment with all our bags (sorry, Mom). The guy from the company was late, so we waited and waited. We weren’t totally sure which apartment it was so we knocked on two of the doors. A man opened one door and said he wasn’t the Airbnb. A little later, he came out and tried to help us. He didn’t speak any English but he called the phone number for us and the guy finally came on his scooter to let us in.

Apparently, even though I messaged the Airbnb app the time of our arrival, he called my phone number to ask what time I was coming. I didn’t answer because my phone was on airplane mode so it wouldn’t turn on my Verizon Travelpass. It didn’t even occur to me that someone would try to call me while I was on the trip (mistake #1).

The Airbnb was pretty nice, only a three minute walk from La Concha Beach. We basically ditched the car the second we got to town, leaving it in an underground parking garage and not coming back for it until it was time to leave on Tuesday.

We freshened up, and I did some quick googling before leading the way to the old town for a self-guided food crawl.  

We found our way to Borda Berri, which the internet had recommended for its risotto. And true to their word, the risotto made with Idiazabal, or Basque sheep’s cheese, did not disappoint.

San Sebastián is known for its pintxos, which are small bites or tapas. Also known as gastronomic delights. The idea is to go to four or five pintxos bars in a night and try lots of different things to eat. But we’re not particularly good at that, so the first night we made it to one for food and one for dessert.

Part of the pintxos experience is muscling your way through hoards of people to the bar where you order your pintxos and then you stand at the bar or another area in the restaurant to eat. If you like to sit and eat, pintxos might not be the place for you! At most pintxos bars, they will give you a basket of bread to eat with your food, and I was always surprised that the bartender could remember exactly what you had eaten when it was time to tally up your bill.

At Borda Berri, we tried the risotto - the online article praising it did not disappoint - squid ravioli soaked in its black ink - okay with bread but not our favorite overall, cold tomato soup with goat cheese which was a bit too flavorful for our likings, and finally the winner of them all, beef cheeks. These were slow roasted for six hours in red wine and tasted like a savory stew meat.

We also each had wine. Mom was disgusted by the local specialty of Txacoli, which she thought tasted like vinegar. She traded that off for regular white wine pretty quickly, but I kept drinking the Txacoli.

After Borda Berri, we headed to La Viña, where we tried the cheesecake. Unlike American cheesecake, it was out on the shelf instead of in a refrigerator. It was moist and airy and as we ate, we spoke to the man next to us, a philosopher and historian from India, who had lived and studied in California and Barcelona, and was now residing in Berlin. Shocked at our short stay in San Sebastián, he told us how he made a trip there every year.

When we finished the cheesecake, I had to wave my money around in order to get the waiters to bill us, since they were so busy serving the crowds that flocked there for the cheesecake. 

Sufficiently placed in food comas, we headed back to our Airbnb to slumber.