San Sebastián

This past weekend was one of the most fun that I've had so far here. Friday we all hopped on another bus and did a guided tour of Madrid. It was pretty much everything that I had already seen before but we were all together so that wss fun. We went through Palacio Real, which I did in high school, but this time my art professor guided us through and gave us an extremely detailed explanation of every room, which was nice for like, the first 4 rooms. As usual, we were running behind (remember concept of time differences) and we knew we had to catch a bus to San Sebastián that left at 4. Lunch was at the Museum of Ham (a semi-chain restaurant around Madrid). We basically ate and ran, as some of the metro line workers were on strike and we weren't sure how long it would take us to get to the station we needed. Luckily all of our lines were running, and so were we to try to get there on time. At this point, I've pretty much figured out the metro in terms of getting where I need to go. The bus stations are always different though and we seem to make friends each time. This time we met a group of Canadians backpacking and they were also on our bus, which, after we ran to catch, left late. The bus ride is through a lot of mountains and we went through what I think is the longest tunnel I've ever seen.

Once we go to San Sebastián, we realized that 1. it was getting dark (it was around 10:15pm) and 2. we really had no idea how to get to our hostel. Have no fear though, Rick Steves came to save us. My friends make fun of my book but I knew which bus to take to get us there and a lovely grandma on the bus showed us which stop was ours. Then came the best first experience of all: the hostel. Of course, none of us had ever stayed in one and had NO idea what to expect, especially since we knew there'd be 3 other people in our room. We found our street and followed some people into the hostel. We got to meet some neat people in the hostel. One girl in our room was from England, her mom was from NYC and she had two siblings living there, she went to St. Andrews in Scotland and was working on organic farms in Spain all summer. Our other people that came and went were from Australia and the guy had already run once in the Running of the Bulls. I think we got used to hostel life, although it was definitely daunting at first. I definitely laughed a lot at just how awkward and funny the whole thing can be.

Saturday was a lot of fun. We got up semi early and headed toward the beach. On the way, we found an awesome pastry shop and all got things to eat. We sat in a park and enjoyed our breakfast. Then we were beach bound. There is a really nice walkway that runs for 2 miles and connects two of the beaches. First, we went to La Concha, which is the main beach. It was still early and the water was absolutely ice cold so we didn't spend much time in the water. The people watching, however, was fantastic. Since we were so close to France, there were a lot of people speaking French as well as Euskari, which is the language spoken in Basque Country. As far as the beach goes, it was beautiful. People there are not shy about what they wear, I definitely saw at least 6 grandmas in bikinis and even more topless, just not abnormal here. After spending a little time on the beach, we walked the entire paseo down to where the funicular was. The funicular is a lot like the inclines in Pittsburgh. We took it to the top of Monte Igueldo, where there were some awesome views. After that, we went and had lunch right along the beach. After that, more beach time and at that point it was hot enough outside that we wanted to get into the water, even though it was still pretty cold!

After beaching, we changed clothes and heading towards the cathedral. We didn't get to go in because there was a wedding going on, but the outside was very nice. I still think Toledo has the most beautiful one, but hey I'm biased. We did lots of looking but shopping was very expensive and we didn't really find anything. We walked around and explored that part of town and then headed over to a tapas bar to eat dinner, drink wine and watch the U.S. lose. After the tapas bar, we called it a night.

Sunday was a lot of walking. We got up and repeated our usual breakfast and then we walked Jourdan to the bus station (a nice 30 min walk) and left here there, as she was taking the 11am bus and ours wasn't until 3pm. Laura and I ended just walking a lot, which was nice. We went to some parks, walked along the river, went to see the other surfer beach which is on a different side of town and grabbed a baguette for lunch. We picked our bus because it gave us more time, but it turned out to be like the first class bus: leather seats, more space, free headphones with music, snack, drinks, and dinner. I was thoroughly enjoying channel 7 on the bus, which was like the love channel but mainly just played 70s and 80s music with a little early 90s. Getting home is always such a long process: bus to Madrid, metro to other bus station in Madrid, bus to Toledo, Bus to home. Luckily next week will be Italy and that is a plane ride so not as much bus time!

Classes are starting to kick into gear, I have a presentation and a paper due tomorrow! I keep forgetting that oh yeah it's school too.

: )

Emily