SAN SEBASTIAN, SPAIN: August 9-25, 2010

SAN SEBASTIAN, SPAIN: August 9-25, 2010

Beth and I have been here for 15 glorious days. This is an old fishing port and summer resort on Spain's northeast coast along the Bay of Biscay, only a few miles from France. It took us a while to warm up to the city, we still wre under the spell of Lago di Como. But now we love the city and region, the land of the Basques, the oldest nation in Europe. (The town also has a Basque name: Donostia.)
Here are some of the highlights:

-- OUR PLACE: We have a small two bedroom apartment right in the center of town, within easy walking distance of the magnificent beaches, the restaurants and the "Parte Vieja" the old quarter. Our building is beautiful -- on the outside; our rooms are well equipped.




We're right around the corner from a lovely three block-long pedestrian street which bumps into a cathedral. It's bars, restaurants and cafés are bustling late into the night. Many mornings, we go to one bar in particular to have great coffee and croissants and use the free internet.




-- BEACHES. The city has 3 beaches which are considered the best urban beaches in Europe.
We swam and sunned ourselves at each one. Rent a lounge chair and chill.










-- FOOD. San Sebastian has more Michelin stars for its restaurants than any other place in Europe. Very popular are the "pintxos" (pinchos), small portion bar food that includes remarkable local seafood.

You can drink them with small glasses of ice cold draft beer "caña," or "txacoli," the local slightly bubbly white wine. These were our lunches and dinners almost every night.





The highlight of our eats -- and possibly the best meal we've had in our lives -- was at Arzak, a Michelin 3-star local restaurant run by Juan Mari Arzak and his daughter Elena. Through the good graces of our friend, food critic extraodinaire Anya von Bremzen, and her partner, Barry Yourgrau, we were first invited to join the family for lunch at the kitchen table in their restaurant.









We returned a week later as their guests for an amazing, lunch graced by one gourmet and artistic masterpiece after another.






--






HIKING. Europe's most popular -- and ancient, more than 1,000 years-old -- pilgrimage trails, winds along the Basque coast through San Sebastian for hundreds of miles to the shrine of Santiago de Compestello, Beth and I spent a strenuous but magnificent afternoon hiking a 7 mile portion of it.



-- DAY TRIPS:


We took a local bus that weaves westward along the hilly coastline to Bilbao, one of Spain's principal ports and home to its steel, mining and ship building industry.

Our goal was a visit to Frank Gehrey's Guggenheim Museum. The structure did not disappoint. Beth and I agree that it's the most amazing contemporary building we've ever seen.



Over the next few days, we take two more bus trips: to an old fishing village, Lekeitio, west of San Sebastian,
then east to Hondarribia, a beautiful old fishing port that lies just across the river from France. It's beautiful, with intact 14th/15th centuries old quarters and great restaurants and views.





-- GRANDE SEMANA: The holiday celebrating the legend of the Assumption of Mary is celebrated with week long festivals in August in San Sebastian and all the neighboring towns.
Free music, basque dancing, parades, nightly fireworks and food sweep up the city. Streets jam packed with locals and tourists.





ONe daily parade was called Giants and of Big Heads. The Big Heads wore costumes topped with massive puppet heads. They chased after children and whacked them with noisy but harmless inflated pigs bladders.

--PACKING UP: We want to come back here again. Maybe live here a while and study Spanish. This place has everything.




Tomorrow, we head for Greece.

AUGUST 7, LAGO DI COMO, ITALY

SATURDAY, AUGUST 7. Beth and I are staying in a hotel in Brunate, a village high on a hillside above Lago di Como, just north of Milan, only a few miles from the Swiss border.


Today, it's exactly 2 months since we left Boston. We feel like old travel hands, used to hand washing clothing and dealing with train and plane schedules and languages we barely understand.

We arrived 3 days ago. The journey here was one of those absurd comic disasters that’s great to retell but no fun at the time. Our plane from Berlin to Milan touched down on Wednesday night at 10:15 PM, an hour late. We knew we had to take a train from the airport to Milan, then another one to Como, at the foot of the lake, then a cable car to Brunate. I immediately call the hotel. No answer. I know that the front desk closes at 10. Ah oh. Did they leave us a key? Should we risk trying to get there, only to find a shut door? We decide to take the train to the half way station at Sarono. The train leaves at 11:30PM. We get to Sarono at 12:15 AM. The station is deserted. We decide to see if we can find a taxi to drive to Como, but first, we -- and our six pieces of luggage -- have to get out of the station. Not so easy.


Ah, there’s the elevator. We load in, travel down to the lower floor and get out.
No exit! just a corridor with stairs leading back up to the platforms...

to another elevator at the other end of the corridor. Ah, that must be it. So...drag the luggage down the corridor, load into the elevator ...
get out –on another platform. No exit. By now we’re very frustrated ... and dead tired.

Drag the luggage -- back to the elevator, go back down; no exit. Go back up. Finally, I walk to the end of the platform and find the exit. So now we’re on the street. No taxis. Wait --- a sign with a number to call. I call. Suddenly, the ringing on my phone gets hugely amplified on a speaker near the taxi stand and a yellow light on a pole starts flashing. But no one answers. Same thing happens when I try again. I give up, start cursing the stupid lack of signs and clear explanations. I leave Beth with the bags and head off to a taverna that’s still open. One waiter speaks English; he says no taxis will go to Como now – but wait, he has a friend who maybe… he makes calls. 10 minutes. Yes, a friend will drive us – leaving in half an hour. For a reduced rate of $105. Thanks, but no thanks, I say. Is there a hotel nearby? Yes, just 200 meters down the road, he says. I go back to Beth, we trundle with the luggage along cobble stone sidewalks, and get to the Hotel Principe. We get a room on the top/attic floor, very stuffy, weak air conditioning, so I open the ceiling window wide. Drop off to sleep by 1:30, and then, two hours later, I feel water drops falling on my face. I come to and discover that it’s raining onto my bed. After a few minutes of awkward struggling, I manage to close the window and fall back asleep. Around 9, we eat a groggy breakfast. It's raining too hard to walk our bags to the station 200 yards away, so we order a taxi and manage to make the 11AM train to Como. It’s pouring when we arrive in Como and we have to schlep our bags a quarter of a mile along bumpy sidewalks to the
entrance to the funicolare. Beautiful old building.

The cable car hauls us up the track as a spectacular view of the lake unfolds below us. At the top, we have to unload. "Beth, can you call Mayflower Movers?"

The last obstacle: we have to drag the luggage uphill four blocks cobblestone streets to the hotel, Albergo Vista Lago: view of the lake.

It's delightful, with a small balcony that's flooded with sun and offers a glimpse of the lake hundreds of meters below. Beth camps out there for the rest of our stay.


Thursday. Afternoon sleep. Rainy. We eat a lovely dinner at the hotel restaurant, cooked by Chef Gabriella. We meet David and Lucy Hayes, vacationing from southwest England. Mid-fifites. She designs and makes custom wedding veils. He’s a colonel in the British Army, the commander of the famous Gurkha regiment made up of Nepali volunteers. That's him -- the non-Nepali -- in his uniform, which he didn't wear, of course, in Italy.


We had great conversations with them for many later nights. They helped us get going on the hiking trails that begin in the village.


Friday, great hike up to the summit of Mote Bellato. Amazing views.


Saturday: Cruise two hours and twenty minutes to village of Bellagio. Lunch, walks, views. Speed boat back.


Monday, August 9, we're going to have to head off to San Sebastian Spain. We will do so with mixed feelings. Our Como visit was delightful. We could have stayed much longer.