Going to the Beach...In the Rain - San Sebastain

So we are on our final train leaving San Sebastian for Bordeaux, our final stop before heading to London then Edinburgh. The three months has been a whirlwind and flown past. I’m pretty sad this will be our last train on our train pass and I will miss the constant exploring and learning that we both have been doing since September. It has gone way to fast.

San Sebastian is really the Spanish version of Nice. It also has a lot of French references as it borders on to France. It is famous for it’s surfing beach and of course its gastronomic amazingness. It was home to molecular cooking at one point and has a huge amount of Michelin star restaurants. Our two nights here were sadly extremely cold (It’s the first time that I have said "It’s bloody freezing!" on the whole trip so far..I’m pretty sure that is about to change) and it rained all the time. The rain was probably a good thing as we both needed some down time after constantly being on the move for the last three months.

We had our own gorgeous little studio that looked over one of the bays. It was a beautiful view. We started with a walk around the old area. This area is full of old windy streets and pintxo bars everywhere. So pintxo are what Tapas are called up in San Sebastain and the rest of Northern Spain. Basically they are a fancy tapa usually with a stick to keep them together. The way it works is you choose what you would like and you pay by the number of sticks at the end. It works a little on honesty as well but the bar tender tends to remember what is what. The old town area was fairly little and didn’t take much to look around. We went over to the surfing beach and saw all the surfers bobbing around in the water. How they weren’t freezing I’m not sure. They must have had some amazing wetsuits!

The idea of going up the hill to see the stunning view wasn’t too appealing due to the rain and wind.
We headed off to one of the bars in the area that was renowned for it’s stunning pintxos.

The counter was full of all of the amazing food! We opted for a couple each…having no idea what was in them just that they didn’t have seafood. They were gorgeous to look at and tasted delicious. Lewis opted for two sandwich like ones. I opted for a pistachio encrusted something… and a fried artichoke. Both were delicious! I also had a toasta covered with ham and mushrooms.

We were too tired and lazy to find more bars with pintxo as good as the ones we were eating so ended up staying here for the night.
I opted for a desert called bob limon…basically a egg shape that was lemon and passionfruit flavoured. The pearl of passionfruit exploded in my mouth and the flavour lasted for the rest of the dish. The yoghurt moose was light and the passionfruit was flavoursome. It was delicious!

The next day was for shopping, a little exploring around the sea-bashing coast and more food. The coast is amazing seeing the force of the sea as it bashes and the concrete walls and slabs and drenches the road is great to watch..It shows the furiousness of the ocean and added to the dreary weather we had. I had read everywhere about La Vina and it’s stunning Basque Cheesecake. It was worth the hype. The cake was baked and had a caramel burnt crust from the sugar. The centre was soft, light and so creamy. It was heaven with every mouthful. I licked the plate clean. The cake comes out liquid from the oven and solidifies as it cools.

The place also had a delicious potato tortilla, it was just cooked so still slightly gooey and the potatoes were deliciously flavour filled.
Lewis meatballs were massive and the tomato sauce hearty and great to dip your bread into. Yum!
We went away from lunch happy as could be…eager to get our hands on more cheese cake before we left.

San Sebastian was a brief relaxing stop. It is one place I can’t wait to go back to, just to relax on the beach…hopefully next time it will be a little warmer and drier.