Trip Log – Day 26- San Sebastian

Queue up: The Drifters “Under the Boardwalk

After a day in bed contemplating some of life’s mysteries, like, “why do European bathrooms have two red water valves and only one blue water valve?” I thought it was time to get out of the room before my brain got too mushy.

I can’t believe we have been in San Sebastián for almost a week, and I have not been out to really explore the town. We walked the promenade, which I thought circled just around the beach I could see from the hotel, but it continued around the hill to another beach on the other side. It was nice to see people of all ages, with different levels of mobility, out walking and sitting and enjoying the fresh air…and more importantly the sunny clear warm-ish day.

It is always interesting to take a casual stroll with a couple of Geo People (Mark and Cat are geologists). As Mark was explaining the different types of rocks we were looking at under our feet (the stones in the sidewalk had fossils, and he pointed out one step in particular that was his favorite, out of 5 miles of boardwalk, he found and remembered, this one little piece of rock. Amazing. And the sea and wall…I kept asking challenging and difficult questions, like, “but who decided to color some of the rocks black and some would be brown”?, or “can’t we just name the rocks what they look like – big black rock with round holes?”

Peter decided to explore another existential question in life “What type of big-assed crane placed those perfect cubes of rocks along the wall?”. I guess taking a walk with us is sometimes like taking a couple of four-year olds on a stroll.

Another exciting item of note: we passed an entire store dedicated to cheesecake. They take cheesecake seriously here.

We had another exceptional lunch. As we were sitting in the restaurant listening to K-Tel’s Disco Dynamite blasting over the speakers, Mark and Peter broke out their best table side disco moves to “I Will Survive” and “It’s Raining Men”. There is nothing like being in a foreign country zoned out on cold medicine, watching two “mature” men in a fine dining establishment busting a move to songs about female strength and power.

Since it was our last day in San Sebastián, we felt our visit was incomplete without seeing a church. We choose the Church of St. Mary’s (I am really loving how much star billing Mary gets in Spain. Peter has started counting the number of Jesus statues vs. Mary statues in churches now, like it’s some kind of popularity contest). This small, but grand church was impressive in all the ways you expect a baroque/gothic church to be, but it also had a small art museum. It was a collection of art from surrounding churches and private collections that had been donated. After wondering why there was a weird statue of Jesus in a Greek pose with arrows (Peter immediately corrected me that it was Saint Sebastian), I found a marble statue of a cherub taking a nap on a skull. I’ve decided I might need to start a new series of “Disturbing Medieval art”.