Pamplona to San Sebastian to Bilbao
After a relatively early night, we got up early and made the quick trip to San Sebastian, only to rediscover that trying to find a place to stay on a weekend in a beach town can really suck. After making innumerable calls, M. managed to score us a place.
By slavishly trying to follow the notations on the map from the tourist office in town, we spent almost an hour searching for the hostal we finally settled into. Fortunately, the owner proved to be cheerful and the room one of the most comfortable we´ve had so far.
This whole mess kind of soured me on the town, though, and while we went out and walked along the beach (amazingly like the beach in ¨To Catch a Thief¨), we didn´t do much besides geek a bit and then get ourselves a good Basque dinner.
The next day, we checked out and headed over to drop off our laundry to be washed and folded at a laundrimat highly recommended by both our guides. What neither guide mentioned was that the wash and dry was only on weekdays. Bummer.
This was especially aggravating, as we´d planned to leave our heavy bags with the laundrimat. We then wasted immense amounts of time trying to catch a cab (which don´t generally cruise around San Sebastian -- it is a big enough town to need taxis, but not big enough for them to leave the taxi stands, it seems) to save my poor aching feet.
In the end, we barely caught a bus in time to go out to visit the Cement Museum. That´s right. This wasn´t even my idea -- for some reason, M. had her heart set on checking it out. When we got there, it was worth the 30 minutes we had to see it before it closed; since everything was in Spanish, I had a hard time figuring it all out.
Then we hustled down to the bus station in time to miss the hourly bus to Bilbao by about two minutes. That was okay, as it left M. plenty of time to call hostals in Bilbao to try to get a place to sleep. Which took something like eight calls. Yeesh.
At least it was a fun drive through beautiful mountains, and it wasn´t too hard to find our hostel. It was pouring down rain, but as this has only happened on two of our twenty days in Spain so far, it is hard to complain.
P´whew. Hopefully we´ll be able to shake off this funk soon and have some more fun!
By slavishly trying to follow the notations on the map from the tourist office in town, we spent almost an hour searching for the hostal we finally settled into. Fortunately, the owner proved to be cheerful and the room one of the most comfortable we´ve had so far.
This whole mess kind of soured me on the town, though, and while we went out and walked along the beach (amazingly like the beach in ¨To Catch a Thief¨), we didn´t do much besides geek a bit and then get ourselves a good Basque dinner.
The next day, we checked out and headed over to drop off our laundry to be washed and folded at a laundrimat highly recommended by both our guides. What neither guide mentioned was that the wash and dry was only on weekdays. Bummer.
This was especially aggravating, as we´d planned to leave our heavy bags with the laundrimat. We then wasted immense amounts of time trying to catch a cab (which don´t generally cruise around San Sebastian -- it is a big enough town to need taxis, but not big enough for them to leave the taxi stands, it seems) to save my poor aching feet.
In the end, we barely caught a bus in time to go out to visit the Cement Museum. That´s right. This wasn´t even my idea -- for some reason, M. had her heart set on checking it out. When we got there, it was worth the 30 minutes we had to see it before it closed; since everything was in Spanish, I had a hard time figuring it all out.
Then we hustled down to the bus station in time to miss the hourly bus to Bilbao by about two minutes. That was okay, as it left M. plenty of time to call hostals in Bilbao to try to get a place to sleep. Which took something like eight calls. Yeesh.
At least it was a fun drive through beautiful mountains, and it wasn´t too hard to find our hostel. It was pouring down rain, but as this has only happened on two of our twenty days in Spain so far, it is hard to complain.
P´whew. Hopefully we´ll be able to shake off this funk soon and have some more fun!
posted by K at
11:12 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home