San Sebastian - Day Sixteen

San Sebastian is a funky, sunny, surf swept town, and would have been a great next destination after Barcelona if it wasn't for one thing; my utter failure to have a proper detox. One of the reasons for this is that I'm still hanging around with Scott, and when we go out alcohol just seems to fall into our mouths without us having much of a say about it, but the other major factor is that San Sebastian is packed with the sort of bars that demand your attention, respect and dinero.

This area of Spain is famed for it's cuisine, and the reason soon becomes obvious when you wander into any of the city's fantastic 'pintxos' bars. I enjoyed snacking on tapas in Madrid with Aidan, spitting my olive stones on the bar floor like a local, but the pintxos you get here are the big daddies of the tapas world. Your first thought when you wander into a bar here is that you've stumbled into someone's wedding reception buffet and you should just sheepishly back out of the place. Every available area of bar space is crammed with plates of interesting, irresistible treats - skewers of seafood and olives, french bread piled high with cured ham or chorizo, black pudding, any number of cheesy delights and a range of kebabs, sausages and giant prawn skewers that get fried up at your request. Each pintxo costs a couple of Euros or less, so you can gradually scoff down a huge range of local treats as you sip at your caña and hop between bars. When you're finished, you just tell the barman roughly how many pintxos you've devoured and settle up the bill before you leave. I'm going to open one of these bars back home and retire a very rich man...

Yesterday Scott and I climbed to the top of Monte Urgull; a wooded, fortified hill above the city where an imposing statue of Jesus keeps a rocky eye on the locals. The view from the top is pretty impressive, but we picked the only two hour period of the last few days when the sky was overcast to go up and have a look. It was worth the walk though.

Last night we went out for a quiet drink, and (predictably) ended up gorging ourselves on pinxos and putting away more beer than we anticipated. We ended up partying until the early hours with a couple of German girls we bumped into in a bar, and as I'm now in no fit state to travel it looks like I'll be here for another night. Oh well, there are worse places to be stuck...