Sand, Sun and Summits in Stunning San Sebastian, Spain

The following post details events that took place long, long ago, in a land far, far away. (Actually, just 3 weeks ago, a bus’s ride away from Madrid).

With Mal and Renatta MIA for the weekend in Alicante, Katie and I decided we better make a trip to the coast ourselves. After much research, we settled on San Sebastian, a town on Spain’s northern coast. It was an active weekend, full of biking and hiking.

Thursday night, we made our way towards San Sebastian. Thankfully our host moms had packed us lunches (Mari, you’re the best), and Katie had a good laugh at my olive loaf sandwich. When we arrived in the town, a little worn out from the 6-hour bus ride, we trudged to our hostel, Urban House. We arrived just in time, apparently, since right as we walked up to the door a girl was posting a sign on the door that said “Reception Closed. Call this number…” She saw us, asked if one of our names was “Cahtehreen,” and when we said yes, remarked that we were just in time and we wouldn’t be homeless for the night. Who knows if that was meant to be a joke or not, but thankfully, we didn’t have to find out. She showed us to our room, which was in an apartment-turned-hostel a few streets down from the main building. Mistaking the light switch for the doorbell, we announced our arrival with a bang (well, more like a ding), and made our way to our private (woohoo!) room. No shoving our backpacks in lockers or squeaking crates 2 feet from strangers’ heads on this trip. We dropped off our stuff and made our way out to find some dinner. We managed to catch one of the pintxos restaurants just before they closed, and had small pieces of fish and croquetas for dinner. We finished up rather quickly, since the workers began to clean up while we were still eating, and made our way back to the hostel.

Friday morning we woke up relatively early, excited by the free “breakfast” that the hostel had advertised in their hostelworld.com posting. Don't get me wrong; we weren’t expecting a continental buffet, but what we got severely paled in comparison. Much to our dismay, the breakfast consisted of some stale half-eaten cereal, and spoiled milk in the fridge. Needless to say, we chose to opt out of the “meal” (sorry for the excessive use of quotation marks… but would anyone else enjoy such “food”? There I go again). Refusing to let the lack of breakfast get as down, we headed to the beach, where a friend had told us of a café she had eaten at when she visited San Sebastian. We enjoyed a nice, warm, real breakfast at El Café de la Concha, and were then ready to take on the day. We walked along the beach for a while, explored the city, including a beautiful cathedral, and stopped into some little shops. 

Katie and her pals

Before we knew it, it had turned into a beautiful day, and we dropped a few things off back at the hostel before renting bikes for the afternoon. San Sebastian was full of bike paths that ran along the beach, and we stopped for a while to walk in the sand. Next stop: Monte Ulia, which we mistakenly believed to be the hill we could ride our bikes up. After being met with an abrupt halt in the bike path, we turned around to see an ambulance and two men in a cherry picker saving a dog that had fallen down the hill. No worries, animal lovers, he made it out okay. We rode to the other side of the cove, and up what we thought was a small hill, Monte Igeldo. Maybe an eighth of the way up the hill/Mount Everest, we had to take a break. We were both huffing and puffing, and I could have sworn Katie was going to have an asthma attack. Just in time for our struggle, a biker, complete with his biking outfit, helmet AND sunglasses, smiled at us as he breezed passed us, making the 89-degree incline seem like a piece of cake. Okay fine, it probably wasn’t that steep (mostly likely an 88-degree incline) but let’s just say that I considered myself at least moderately in shape prior to attempting to ride up this mountain, and afterwards demoted myself to plain old couch potato. We trudged on, stopping more often than I care to admit to catch our breaths. When it seemed as though we had neared the zenith, we had to stop riding our bikes and walk them up the rest of the way. Cue the biker (perfect timing for peak embarrassment) who was on his way down, chuckling at us as we struggled to make it to the top. Thanks, dude. After another 20 minutes, we had made it to the top. Success! The view was well worth it; we had a panoramic view of the city, ocean, and mountains on the other side of the cove. Just gorgeous. 

The view from Monte Igeldo, post exhausting trek

As we unlocked our bikes and made our way to the bike path again, I knew that quite an adrenaline rush was in store for us. The moment I mounted my bike and let go of the breaks, I was completely surprised by how quickly I picked up speed going down that mountain. The wind in my hair, the sunshine on my face… just kidding, that’s enough of that. In all honesty, I was going so fast that I couldn’t help myself but laugh. I promptly envisioned myself wiping out and sliding the rest of the way down the hill on my stomach, and opting to forgo that path, soon began to make use of my breaks. We made it down the mountain in a record 3 minutes, and was honestly tempted to suffer all the way back up the hill again just so I could ride back down it again.

We returned our bikes and decided that the best way to recover from a long day of struggling up a hill was ice cream. We found a pretty large ice cream shop, and I got Ferrero Rocher with salted caramel – some of the best ice cream I’ve had. After enjoying our ice cream, we decided that our legs were sufficiently stiff to merit a little nap at the hostel. We didn’t end up staying for long, since for some reason I was suddenly convinced that we were going to miss sunset. By the time we made it to the lookout point, which was supposedly the best place to see the sunset, we still had hours to spare. We entertained ourselves with Katie’s music, which consisted of her eighth grade self, singing the hits of the early 2000’s. (So that makes Katie seem rather narcissistic, but don’t worry, I made her do it). After 2 hours, when the sky was covered in clouds and the sun had disappeared behind Monte Igeldo, we asked ourselves why this was considered the best place to watch the sunset, and why we had spent so much time shivering to see it. 

Waiting for the sunset that never came 

Oh well, we were starving and decided it was time for dinner. We made out way to the old city center and had a nice dinner at a restaurant called BideBide. Unexpectedly, we got a dinner and a show, as just outside the window we were sitting by was your typical drunken scene. Some poor guy had peaked a little on the early side (actually way on the early side – it was only 8 o’clock) and was struggling to keep his head up as he sat on the street corner. We watched as his friend tried to get him to perk up, and several groups of people walking by stopped to inquire about him. Eventually the police showed up and hopefully helped the poor guy out. After the curtain closed, it was time to call it a night, and we passed out back at Urban House.

Saturday morning I woke up early and went for a run along the beach, revisiting Los Peines del Viento, sculptures that we built into the rocky coastline on the Western side of the cove. When I arrived back at the hostel, we got ready for the day, packed up, checked out, and left our bags at reception to climb the mountain on the Eastern side of San Sebastian’s cove, Monte Urgull. Still a little worn out from our (attempted) bike ride the previous day, we slowly made our way up the mountain. When we arrived at the top, we were awarded with another panoramic view of the beach and the surrounding city. 

On top of Monte Urgull

After taking a few moments to take it all in, we made our way back down and decided to have ice cream for lunch. We’re such healthy eaters. Before we knew it, it was time to make our way to the bus station, and Katie dragged her rolling bag across the cobblestone roads the mile down to the station. Nothing like the sound of small plastic wheels hitting every crevice between tiny stones to end the day. Trust me, I know all about it (I put Mal and Renatta through the same thing the following weekend all throughout Portugal). When we made it onto the bus and began our ride, we discovered that the bus would take a whopping 9 hours to get back to Madrid. Thankfully, all was not lost; we had Star Trek, complete with Spanish voice dubbing, to keep us entertained. Hearing the mispronunciation of “Señor Espock” repeatedly (and watching Chris Pine) was enough to do the trick and pass the time before arriving home.