Full day in San Sebastian

I have wanted to come here for years.  What a great city.  Just such a nice vibe.  The food scene is amazing but there is a sophistication to this city that makes it very special.  We started off our day by walking to a more residential area of town.  There are these beautiful trails in front of the buildings lining up the water.

Here is one of the old apartment buildings.  Old architecture at its best.

Pastelería Geltoki is the pastry shop.

We split a few things and of course had coffee.

I loved their ovens.  I noticed as we kept seeing more bakeries that they all have these ovens.  Very compact.

We strolled back down to the beach.  There is this carousel from the early 1900’s.

As we made our way around the square and up the small hill I took this photo of the stretch of San Sebastian.  Just beautiful here.

This church, all European towns have one, is from the 1800’s.  Quite large inside but is tucked in between all the stores in the town.

We walked to the other side of town and here are the views of the water from over there.  These huge slabs of concrete are there for to stop erosion.

Checked out their market called Mercado de la Bretxa.  Nothing like the one in Barcelona but really nice shops.

There are few stores worth checking out.  This one is called Pukas.  It is a brand and surf shop started in San Sebastian.  It has grown way past the original shop of boards and bathing suits.  The other store is Noventa Grados which is their version of Barneys.

Alboka is on all the lists as a place to pick up local goods from artisans.  Not.  It is more like local shlock.

The square Alboka sits on is called Constitucion Square.  A very cool square with lots of history.  Above the square are apartments. One after the other that go around 3/4 of the square.  Each of them have a number on them that you can see from below.  Makes them look like cabanas at the beach.  What they were at one point were boxes for people to view the bull fights or anything else that went on in the square.  They kept the numbers there to preserve history.

We stopped in another local store, Loreak Mendian, which started here as a t-shirt store.  Now it has expanded way past that.

Our lunch was at Ibai.  A tiny restaurant located in the basement.  There is a bar upstairs.  Only about 30 seats tops.  Lunch and cash only.  Certainly a locals spot as we noticed as our meal progressed.  The food is simple and delicious.  Highly recommend this place.

They start you off with these small bites of chorizo.  Perfect.

We started with a lobster salad.  Pieces of poached lobster with just a smattering of roe sitting in a liquid broth loaded with butter.

We also had the grilled calamari.  Simple.  In all honesty they don’t speak English and we do not speak Spanish so it wasn’t easy to communicate.  Taking a look around what other people were eating was interesting.  All simply prepared but obviously brilliant.

We split a whole sole for two.  The fish literally came off the bone.  I believe they baked it in olive oil and butter and then put it back into that for a sauce.  Kind of can’t go wrong with that.

We stopped in a few other places on the way back for our room for a major siesta.  We eventually got up and wandered into old town where small bars line the street.  Each one has an abundance of tapas.  Amateur night here is Monday night many of the best ones are closed.  We decided we would just try a few that were open that we wanted to go to and come back to the ones we wanted to try for lunch tomorrow.

We did stop in Atari Gastroteka and have the foie gras.

Our other stop was Le Cepa where we had a plate of jambon.  A total wow.

We returned to Goiz Argi and had boquerones on a piece of bread.   It was open and we enjoyed the shrimp the day before.  What a town.