a relatively unhinged travel diary

two days in san sebastián

Bit of a different one today, folks! I had a lot of little travel notes and photos from the last few days and I figured why not put them together into a log. I enjoy reading other people’s travel diaries, so hopefully this is a pleasant read.

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I went to San Sebastián this week, for just over two days. I’m typing this on the train back, actually, on a Google doc I opened before leaving my hotel at 6:20 this morning because, charmingly (I’m so serious), there is no wifi on the train. It’s fine, honestly; I started a new long-term writing project a couple of weeks ago, and the absence of wifi is very good for my daily word goal. Train travel is also, when you think about it, spiritually incongruous with Internet access. So it’s fine.

It’s a six-hour journey back to Barcelona; on the way to San Sebastián, it was six and a half hours. I have to admit I was almost childishly excited about this when I boarded the train on Tuesday afternoon. So much time, I thought, to read and write and stare out the window. In the interest of full transparency, this was before I found out about the wifi situation. Slightly lower levels of excitement following that discovery.

For the trip, I brought a book I hadn’t yet started, even though beginning a new book in public is, for reasons I can’t quite identify but are almost certainly silly, deeply embarrassing for me. Still, literally not a single person is looking at me, so I am safe from my self-imposed shame. It’s Clarice Lispector’s A Breath of Life, but the Spanish translation (Aprendiendo a Vivir), and it is, I realize when I crack it open, entirely plotless. Vignettes, essentially, she wrote over the years for Jornal do Brasil. Very good, surely, but had I known, not the book I’d have chosen for a six-and-a-half-hour train ride. You live, you learn, etc.

Don’t worry, I did end up reading for a couple of hours.

It’s late by the time I finally arrive at the hotel, after dragging my little suitcase over a set of stairs to reach its street. The contents of my stomach consist of a small bag of potato chips from the train ride, so I drop my things off in my room and go in search of food. I assume there’ll be plenty of places to eat despite the lateish hour—the Spain of it all. But I forget it’s Tuesday and San Sebastián is in the middle of its off-season, so while I can easily find a bar to pour me a drink, food is harder to come by. I end up (and I’m not proud of this) buying a sleeve of Oreos from a mini-mart a couple of blocks from my hotel. I eat them in a span of approximately three minutes.

I could have, obviously, dedicated a little more time to finding food. Expanded my radius. But exhaustion and convenience won this round, I fear.

The hotel is cute. Needless to say, to the couple next door who I have to assume is very recently married, I wish nothing but continuing love and happiness.

*

After a slow breakfast (at the hotel; I’d forgotten it was included), the first thing I do is head toward the boardwalk. It’s early still, and the streets are fairly empty.

I have a vague destination in mind, but my goal really is to spend as much time as possible near the water. The long, wide boardwalk in San Sebastián reminds me of Montevideo’s, which happens to me a lot as I suffer from a lack of imagination and every seaside city reminds me of my first.

It’s not that cold, and I wish I’d brought my swimsuit. There are enough people in the water, and not all of them are surfing, so it wouldn’t have been weird. Next time.

Forty-five minutes later, I end up at my intended destination, El Peine del Viento, a set of three steel sculptures by Eduardo Chillida that look like they’ve been there for centuries, although they were only finalized in 1976. I do the thing of trying to capture something that doesn’t want to be captured.

I’m hungry, so I have a coffee, some toast, and orange juice at a cafeteria close by. I sit on the terrace where next to me, a woman wipes her giant dog’s drool off his face.

On my way back, I stop by a couple of bookstores. I have this idea that since I’m contextually disappointed by it, I could buy a supplement to the book I brought, but it has to fit in my jacket pocket. I peruse, but I don’t buy anything.

Palacio Miramar, a former residence of the Spanish royal family, is also on my short list of places to visit. It’s closed (for renovation, I think, judging by the cranes outside it), but you can still walk up to it, following a little winding footpath. It’s beautiful, with a small park and a lovely view of the bay.

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Peckish again, so I drop in to a bar near Plaza de la Constitución and order what is essentially a bowl of mushrooms. They are delicious, as mushrooms usually are.

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When I go back to the hotel to charge my phone and rest for a little while, I come across this cat by the window and immediately fall in love.

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I am generally comfortable traveling on my own, but sometimes I think—too comfortable?—so I occasionally do these tours that force me to meet people. Which is why I book a pintxos and bar crawl for Wednesday night.

Reader: I am the only one on the tour. Just the guide, walking us from bar to bar spouting off historical tidbits about the city, and me. We’re both more or less resigned to the situation, so it works out, but I figure this is what I get for trying to be social. Road to hell and all that.

At the beginning of the tour, we stop at a market and the guide—who is, to be clear, very nice—tells me that the cheese she’s offering me is vegan because it is made of goat milk, from goats that live freely their whole lives and are cremated when they die (“so they are not sacrificed,” she adds helpfully). So much effort has gone into this story, I am powerless against its logic. I eat a piece of the cheese. Later, my stomach suggests I should’ve demurred. The unbothered goats, though, got me.

I will say the pintxos are very good, and we do go to places I wouldn’t have tried on my own.

Sometime around the middle of our tour, the guide dedicates a not-insignificant amount of time to paranormal happenings in the city, a subject I am not particularly interested in but given I am currently in a three-hour one-person tour, I Lean In and ask several follow-up questions. In return, she tells me which bridges to avoid and when (because of the spirits).

*

The next morning, I cross one of those bridges to Gros, a neighborhood with the highest number of surf-related stores I’ve ever seen, and meander down a different boardwalk. The rocket power is palpable.

I find a used bookstore and buy a thin collection of poems by Antonio Machado. It fits neatly in my jacket pocket, and I carry it with me into a cozy cafe, where I order an americano and a lemon loaf. For the next half hour, I read a few pages and write some of what you’re now reading.

Back to the old town I go. On the main boulevard, I buy a few postcards at a kiosk a few steps from a Zara.

It’s sunny, so a few blocks later, I sit at a cafe, order a glass of wine, and write out my postcards—two to friends and one to my brother. I’m listening to three ladies at a nearby table, each between 65 and 75 years old, who are discussing their air fryers—huge—and then, the weather. They are all in agreement about how nice the sun feels, remembering how it snowed two—or was it three, one ponders—years ago right at around this time, and isn’t the warmth preferable?

I think how lucky it is that I am easily entertained, considering I am so often in charge of the task.

It’s my last night here, so once the postcards are addressed, I try to figure out where best to watch the sunset. I’m almost stressed by the idea of wasting it by not seeing it from a worthy spot. To be fair, I always care about sunsets, but I care so much more when I’m traveling. My friend, who was here a few years back, sent a recommendation near Park Urgull, so I decide to try it.

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Sunset is still a ways away, though, so I drop off the postcards at the post office and cross over to Gros again for a late lunch at a vegan restaurant.

Sometimes I think I like the sea in large part because it serves as a vehicle for bridges. Not even symbolically; I just think they’re breathtaking. Last night, the tour guide told me of the many wooden bridges that collapsed before the city wised up to the stone of it all. Not a unique tale, of course, but I think of all the long-gone, forgotten bridges that bore the weight of passengers for years before falling, buried by the sea and soon replaced by a shiny new model. An unceremonious end, all things considered, to something that once provided crossing.

The vegan restaurant has come highly-recommended, and I’m in the mood for familiarity. There’s a fairly universal je ne sais quoi about vegan restaurants that makes me forget where in the world I am for a moment. I imagine it’s the same feeling experienced by those who often frequent Hard Rock Cafes. This is, I believe, neither a good nor bad thing.

When I head back to the hotel, belly full of falafel, I take a tiny detour to cross a different bridge back to the old town.

*

I hate to waste precious daylight, but I decide to wash my hair. Few things have had a greater impact on my day-to-day than the realization that I’m not myself when my hair’s dirty.

While it’s airdrying, I finish out my daily word goal. Success, etc.

I get ready and start my walk to Park Urgull. The lighting in the hotel bathroom is so kind to me that I have to check my face on my camera every time I’m back outside, to make sure I’m not overly delusional.

Urgull, I should mention, is a bit of a hike. I don’t know why this shocks me, considering how for the last 48 hours I have been looking up at the large Sacre Coeur planted at the very top of the mount.

But there are a lot of stairs involved.

More than I’d expected.

I haven’t hiked properly in some time, and I wonder what would happen if I simply collapsed, right here, like an old wooden bridge. Would the moss cover me, too?

Fortunately, I remain upright and reach what I think is the highest point by foot, arrived at following a dark set of stairs that, were I in possession of a deeper sense of self-preservation, I would’ve avoided.

Well, reader, the spot my friend recommended was closed, really bringing the old journey v. destination debate to the fore for me. Honestly, I was so thrilled to have made it, and the view was so beautiful, that the disappointment barely registered. There were other people up there and I needed to catch my breath, so I stayed for a bit, perching on a low bench when I was done taking photos.

It’s steeper than I remember on the way down, and I hold my arms out like a child to keep my balance. I (intentionally!) follow a different path than the one I took up, this one toward the aquarium, which leads me toward Paseo Nuevo, a part of the coast I hadn’t yet walked, bordering Urgull.

There is a small—very small—island in the middle of the bay, called Isla de Santa Klara. For obvious reasons I’ve been paying attention to it since my first morning here, and I get the best view of it now, so close I can see the seagulls resting on its rocks.

Mind you, this isn’t even a good photo.

It’s much cloudier than earlier in the day and I can feel the weather changing, but between the hike endorphins, the sound of the waves crashing into the rocks below, the dark cliffs above, the nearby island bearing my name, and my clean hair, I am sporting the kind of semi-demented smile that likely makes people wary.

Although maybe not, because I am soon appointed to take a picture of a group of approximately seven teenage girls. This is, you understand, a great honor. I knew they’d ask before they did: they were frantically looking around for promising candidates, and when I was about 20 feet away one of them pointed me out to the others, all of whom nodded in relief, delighted to bits to have found someone. I made sure to include my island in the background.

*

Whenever I travel, I always miss oddly specific things, like my usual brand of cereal and crunchy peanut butter. This time around I also, if I may, miss potatoes, over which San Sebastián does not seem to obsess as much as its southern sisters? I know that sounds insane. But after a quick cider, which feels the thing to drink post-hike, I go to a bar because it explicitly has patatas on its menu. They’re slightly mediocre, but that’s okay.

Last, of course, is one final stroll down the bay. I took photos, but they don’t do it justice.

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Referenced Places:

• Hotel Atari (where I stayed)

• El Peine del Viento

• Palacio Miramar

• Antonio Boulevard (for the terrace, mostly)

• Parque Urgull

• Paseo Nuevo

I’ll list some of the restaurants and bars, too, although if you have no food restrictions, you could probably go anywhere and have a great meal/time.

• Mapa Verde (vegan restaurant in Gros)

• Alabama (site of the lemon loaf)

• Bar Tamboril (where I had the lovely mushrooms)

• Jose Mari

• Fermin Calbetón

• Bidaia (home of the eggplant dish pictured above)

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