23 November 2010

San Sebastian

In the strangeness of everything going on here, I have neglected to write about some things that are happening. Right now I want to write about our two trips to San Sebastian, a wonderful city!
San Sebastian is just over an hour bus ride away from Vitoria, to the northeast...here's map with the largest Basque cities, so you all have a better idea of where I'm going and where I've been.

The only places I haven't written about are Pamplona and LogroƱo, but I will be going to Pamplona on December 11th with our excursion class.
So now that you all have an idea of where I am and where San Seb. is, I can begin. Elley, Adrian (an Irish friend) and I decided to go to San Sebastian one Thursday a few weeks ago because we heard it was a great place and we wanted to go explore for the day. It was such a great day! San Seb. is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, it's right on the ocean and has some great historical buildings. There is a large statue of Jesus positioned on a hill at the end of town and when we got to the city we decided that we wanted to find out a way to the statue. Turns out there is actually a "hiking" trail that goes up to Him and He is standing on an old castle, turned museum. We didn't go into the museum, but the majority of the castle (or at least what we could see) is open to the public. We explored around there and ate lunch up by the statue where we had a view of the whole city, it was so pretty. We took a different way down and came across an old cemetery for English soldiers who had helped the Spanish fight in some war...we couldn't figure out which. The landscape on this hill is a literal jungle, moss and vines and tons of tress and bushes, it feels like a completely different world than the city. Then we all wanted to go to the beach, so we made our way down to the main beach, Playa de la Concha, which is actually a large bay. We played in the water for a while and just chilled on the beach; it was a cloudy day but it was still humidly warm, so we didn't freeze too much. :) Well, after that we were gonna go to the bus station and go home, but instead we got lost for two hours and gave ourselves a pretty good tour of the new part of the city. But we did finally make it home, it was just a lot later than we expected.

About a week an a half later, we went back to San Sebastian with our excursion class. Before we went to San Seb, we went to a small Basque town, Ekainberri, to learn about a prehistoric cave in the area. We didn't actually get to go to the real cave, but the museum we went to has guided tours of a replica of the cave, which was still pretty cool...nothing like our spelunking in Durango though. This little town was adorable and completely in the mountains, with a nice river running along side it, Elley and I felt right at home there. Then we were on our way to San Sebastian and we really just had free time in the city and since it was a sunny day, we all headed to the smaller beach to get some sun and catch some waves. Our Irish friends really wanted to try surfing, but Elley and I thought the waves looked too intimidating, so we just laid in the sun for a while. It was so wonderful to have sunshine! We all needed a good dose of Vitamin-D. When the sun started to go down we all went to a bar for some tea and then we were on our way back home.

So that's a bit of what's going one and I will be sure to write more soon about other things that have been happening. Here's some pictures from the first time we were in San Sebastian.

Agur!


Elley and me at the bay


The Jesus Statue


Cathedral of the Good Shepherd (Catedral del Buen Pastor)

1 comment:

Hannah, Here! said...

You have the cutest clothes ever!