Friday, 23 March 2007

where the bumper cars sang to me (san sebastian)


school organzied weekend travels may seem somewhat disadvantageous. you can't do what you want, when you want, where you want. and basically, you are at school so its pretty much automatically not as cool. but i am going to admit right now, i am a nerd. not only did i sit at the front of the bus and joke with the chaperones, but i loved this sponsored trip to the basque country. let me explain why.

they organize everything. you pay them one lump sum, and suddenly flights, tours, itinerary, hotel, and food are all dealt with. plus, we ended up doing things that i NEVER would have spent the money on if it had been up to me. our hotel was amazing, and the meals that were included with the trip were four course meals. literally. when we got to our tables there were already warm rolls! and every day we were lead by a tour guide.

ok, so the weekend begins.
we meet at the airport at some unreasonably early hour and after a plane, bus, walk, bus, we get to this little village called Getaria. It was raining (as it continued to do for the rest of the day) and although it was only 10 AM it felt like it was time for dinner. There was no time for walking around. Food was needed right away. Thankfully we managed to find an amazing bakery, and somehow managed to communicate to them that we wanted toasted bread with jam. and the jam was homemade!! it was so good.

we continue with another long bus ride, and finally arrive in san sebastian just in time for lunch, where we are served a ridiculous amount of food and i get way too excited and eat as much as possible. literally. i have never eaten so much i thought i was going to be sick, apparently there is a first for everything. and it was so amazing, i didn't even regret eating it all.

after some digestion slash napping time, the group of us met our tour guide for the weekend, and headed out for a walking tour of san sebastion. set the scene:
cold wind
cold rain and mist
cloudy skies
no umbrella
mesh shoes and jean jacket (way to pack appropriately for the weather claire)

regardless of the most horrid weather possible for a walking tour, our guide managed to stretch it into a 4 hour extravaganza, speaking spanish nonetheless. so not even were we not paying attention to him because we were distracted by our uncomfortably wet everything, but we couldn't even pretend like we were listening to be polite. needless to say we we began to get quite ridiculous around the second hour. needless to say, emily and i began reminiscing about zoolander, and decided that blue steel would be the new theme of the weekend. this is cathedral blue steel (notice the soaked hair and wind burned face), unfortunately my cheek muscles were too cold to pucker appropriately, but i promise they got much better by the end of the weekend.

when the tour guide (who was quite good at overlooking the fact that we paid no attention to him the entire walking tour) finally said we could leave to get some dinner, all we wanted was to be warm. i was still ridiculously full from lunch, so we went to a tapas place. in basque country they call tapas pinxos. supposedly they are different, but i can't tell what it is. and we all got like 2 tapas and something warm to drink and sat as far away from the door as possible.

and the next morning there was sun. beautiful, glorious sun. and so consequently we were all suddenly full of energy. it probably didn't help that the first place we went was a theme park on a hill overlooking the city. Of course, none of the rides were open for the day yet because it was off season, and we were told that the real reason anyone goes there is for the amazing view. But the sight of bumper cars, and even better, bumper boats, and the smell of park food made me very nostalgic for some good rides. i mean, it was no holiday world (thats for you cricket), but it would have to do. i tried to convince everyone that we should stay there until the park opened, but i dont think the tour guide appreciated my ideas.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

aw, you do love me!
and i appreciate the wonderful stories. you're amazing

cricket