San Sebastián and Pasajes de San Juan

Day 3: San Sebastián and Pasajes de San Juan

On Sunday morning, Mom wanted some time to regroup. We had shopped for groceries the evening before (the Airbnb was right across from the supermarket) so she was able to have tea, orange juice, scrambled eggs, and yogurt for breakfast. Not typically one for breakfast and because I was chomping at the bit to get going, I walked down to La Concha Beach.

La Concha Beach is a beautiful, huge city beach swarmed with people, but the views of Santa Clara Island, Mount Urgull, and the rest of San Sebastián, coupled with the warm sun beating down on you and the scent of the sea, make it totally worth braving the crowds.

Immediately upon arriving, I noticed that something was going on, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint what right away. The town is at an elevation right above the wide beach, and you can take steps or a ramp to go down to the beach, or you can walk along the promenade which gives you views of the beach without the sandy feet. There were tents set up on the promenade so I knew some sort of event was happening, and a voice was announcing something in either Basque or Spanish. Approaching the beach, I finally noticed that there was a swim race going on. At first I thought it was a triathlon, since I saw a man in a wetsuit running out of the water, but after a few struggled exchanges in Spanish (and pantomiming) with some women on the beach, I learned that the race was just a swim, but at the end, the swimmers would run out of the water to the finish. This was confirmed when I finally left the beach and saw the race routes posted on the promenade.

I went back to meet mom, and we packed up our stuff to do a bit of a hike. We headed first over the bridge to Zurriola Beach and then found a path up Mount Ulia, which gave us a beautiful view of San Sebastián. Not too long after that, we took a wrong turn, and finally, frustrated and hot, we returned to San Sebastián.

   

We saw some people eating ice cream, and in my fragmented Spanish I asked where they got it. They tried to explain in Spanish, and then, upon realizing we were all Americans, we switched to English and chatted for a while.

They were from Colorado. A girl about my age and her mom, traveling through France and about as far into Spain as we were.

For a while, the girl, Lauren and I chatted about places we had travelled, where we wanted to go in the world and our careers, and what our trips had been like with our moms, while her mom, Linda, and my mom presumably chatted about the same.

Finally, I wandered to find the gelato and brought mom back a cone of tiramisu flavored ice cream with two scoops - one yogurt of basque berries and one chocolate.  We all talked for a little longer before going our separate ways.

Mom and I tried some cold pintxos and I drank some more Txacoli. Maybe it goes without saying but cold pintxos are not nearly as good as the hot ones. Mom thought the lobster roll with shrimp thing she had was pretty delicious, but I could do without cold sunny side up eggs on things. Maybe I’m just missing the point though.

After the pintxos, I finally went for a swim at La Concha Beach. It was around 6 pm, and there were still some people at the beach and in the water, but when I swam out to the swimming raft, there was only one other swimmer there. I went down the little water slide and headed back to shore.

We changed really quickly and took the bus to Pasaia, because I wanted to eat at a small fishing village. But, I completely goofed!!!

When we first planned this trip, I was joking around that we were going to the one part of Spain where they didn’t speak Spanish. San Sebastián (and also Saint Jean de Luz) is part of the Basque Country. The Basque culture and language is completely separate from Spain and France, but as the Basques have resided in the area for thousands of years, their history is closely interrelated with that of Spain and France.

Because of that, every town has a Spanish and a basque name and when I put “San Juan del Pasajes” into google maps nothing came up. Thus I falsely assumed “Pasaia” was the name for the town since I had seen it written on the trail when hiking earlier.

Luckily, mom’s a trooper so she willingly walked the 45 minutes it took to correct my mistake, through a very industrial city, and eventually we arrived in the tiny town of San Pedro, where we took a small green and white boat on a five minute, less than one euro ride across to San Juan del Pasajes.

San Juan del Pasajes was characterized by narrow cobblestone streets that were nearly too small for cars to fit through and pink flags hung everywhere for a recent festival, including a huge banner hanging off the old church.


Disappointingly, most of the restaurants were closed as it was Sunday night, so everyone was restricted to a few outdoor restaurants by the water.

The food was decent, although I had a hard time getting over the texture of the baby eels. The hake was pretty decent though.

After dinner, we headed to the correct bus stop, and chatted with some elderly local women who were not impressed with my command (or lack thereof) of the Spanish language.  We also chatted with an Italian couple, and after we got off the bus, found some swans on the way back to the apartment.