Donostia and beyond

Well, I'm only running two countries behind at this stage so I'm having to resort to my journal to try and remember what I actually did.

Hmmm.....Donostia was rather lovely. We ended up booking into a little hostal two streets back from the Playa della Concha run by the very friendly Miguel who had a penchant for giving neck massages whenever he passed by. Still, he was very enthusiastic about sharing his knowledge of his town and gave us many suggestions for the best bars, restaurants and discos where we would be sure to meet some suitably handsome Basque chicos...alas, we didn't quite make it to any of his recommendations though. However, the multilingual conversation in Basque, Spanish, Italian and Sign was pretty funny, and foolishly or not, he did give us the password for the free internet at the hostal which I made good use of until I was booted off by someone working there who actually needed it.

The Old Town near the beach was the first destination on our usual exploratory walk, admiring the beautiful architecture, stylish promenades and manicured parks along the way. It has a relaxed vibe here - what you would expect of a place known as a holiday destination of the rich and famous (not us sadly) and the stylish (of course we fit into this category). We had a coffee and then decided to be brave and try the famous local pintxos, their version of tapas. Basically, the idea is that you peruse the selection of snacks along the bar and make your choice, piling them up on your plate. Each pintxo will have a toothpick in it, so at the end you count up your toothpicks and pay for what you ate - or in our case we paid up first to avoid any embarassing mistakes since we couldn't actually name what we had eaten. Well, you try and read Basque successfully, I say! The food was washed down with a glass of the local fizzy white wine txakoli (pronounced like chug-o-lee) which has to be poured from a great height to allow more fizz. Sadly though, the drink portions were rather small so Rachel and I were quite justified in sampling the sangria too.

The next morning we managed to leave the hostal in search of breakfast without running into Miguel again, thus avoiding another spanitaliano conversation about which discos we should have checked out. We also decided that other linguistic combinations could include 'Frasque' for French/Basque, and of course 'Spasque', for Spanish/Basque. After feasting on pastries, fresh orange juice and coffee for breakfast (although somewhat alarmingly they seem to think it's perfectly reasonable to blow cigarette smoke all over your food while they sit at the bar next to it) we set off to organise the bus tickets for tomorrow's trip across the border (surprisingly easy...what is it with these people??) and a stroll along the river, where we met a chatty gentleman who thought we looked Basque and assumed we were locals. When he found out that we were just Australian tourists he told us all about pintxos even though we had already told him that we'd had them the night before - maybe he just wanted to show off his English skills. In any event we bade him farewell and continued our walk to the surfing beach where we might have found some swell if we were equipped with binoculars, checked out the weird cube contraption of a convention centre and had a coffee in honour of Dad's birthday. Back over the river we decided to walk up to the Jesus statue at the top of Monte Urgull to enjoy the stunning view in the perfect sunshine, stopping on the way up to see the free museum exhibits there. By the time the photographic frenzy had finished it seemed like a good idea to take the Txu Txu Train (ie choo choo) around the city and finally have a late lunch/early dinner/postcard writing session before returning to the hostal to sort out accommodation for France. We did make it out to a little bar near the Cathedral for one last beer/coffee before the pesky locals encroaching more and more on our table eventually drove us out to prepare for our departure once again.

The next morning we escaped from the hostal without seeing Miguel again (so no neck massage then) and made it onto our 9am bus bound for Biarritz. The scenery along the way was beautiful of course, with the Pyrenees forming a backdrop on one side and glimpses of the coast on the other, despite the dreary weather. Biarritz is probably well worth a visit but time, or rather the lack of left luggage facilities in France, meant that it wasn't practical. Besides, 3 1/2 hours waiting in the train station cafe was just what we were looking for since it gave me a chance to update my journal, drink bad coffee and good Orangina, and have a Croque Monsieur.

The rest of the day was spent on trains - 2 1/2 hours on one TGV to Bordeaux then 3 hours on another to St-Pierre-des-Corps (1st class is the only way to travel, naturally!), and then finally 5 minutes on a little navette to Tours, with us arriving just as a huge thunderstorm decided to open up above us. Ironically, we had just been talking about how on all of our previous trips we had been uncannily lucky about the weather, but not any more! Either that, or we need to change Crowded House's 'Always take the weather with you'. Our hotel was stylish and surprisingly cheap (once we got there, having waited out the storm) so after a pizza dinner down the road, we were soon ensconced in front of BBC World with the map out planning the next bit of the trip involving car hire - ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!