San Sebastian...last stop in Spain!

  San Sebastian, Spain and Canary Islands
Sunday, July 13, 2008

Time to do some catching up...

Guggenheim from across the river

The Guggenheim was great! The art wasnīt much better than what Iīd expect comes in any top museum (MoMA, Louvre, etc.), but the building itself was beautiful.  Crazy - very few straight lines anywhere - but beautiful.  It was designed to resemble a ship, although the materials reflected more of a fish.  (As intended - Frank Gehry apparently loved fish and used to take the fish his mom would buy for dinner, alive, and put it in his bathtub to play with it as a kid...at least, up until dinnertime.) 


There were two pieces by Jeff Koons that I really liked - one a giant dog made of flowers (named ĻPuppyĻ)

Puppy

and another a seemingly light-as-air set of balloons that were actually titanium (I think) metal pieces.

Metallic, heavy-as-a-few-tons, ballons

Lisa enjoyed one on the stairs leading in that she felt she had something in common with...

Life meets art

There was also a mind-bending set of walk-through sheets of metal set up in vertical spheres, ellipses, and ovals by Richard Serra.  Unfortunately, we couldnīt take pictures inside...but if you are there, itīs worth walking through.


...end Bilbao...cue 1.25 hr bus ride and start of San Sebastian, last stop in Spain!...

In perhaps the best culinary experience of the trip, our first night in San Sebastian was filled with tapas-bar-hopping.  Essentially, there are a number of little bars (few if any seats) where they serve a huge variety of tapas (little spanish dishes...a few bites, max...you eat a bunch of them to comprise a dinner).  You go to one bar, order a dish of tapas, maybe a drink, eat/drink/be merry, and then repeat the process at the next bar down the street.

Tapas bar!

 

Best tapas of the night

We had one that wasnīt so great (a crab tart) but many more that were good (an incredible shrimp dish) and surprisingly tasty (foie gras...yuck, but actually yum.)  And as Lisa observed, itīs somewhat on the honor system since you pay after you eat, and you could easily step out, but the crowds are fun, lively, and seem to be honorable.

Outside the street of tapas bars

Later that night, Lisa and I saw a very creepy play performed in a plaza.  (Itīs apparently theater week, so some nights have free plays performed.)  Ours was...how shall I say this...very interpretive.  Weīve narrowed it down to the story of a woman who was forced to conform as a girl and was perhaps sexually abused; she then lashed out at her peers, tried to regain her innocence, and finally broke free to accept herself and be happy with who she was.  At least, thatīs what we got from a play with a heavily-make-upīed lady in a nightgown who orchestrated the dancing of 4 creepy white-faced girls in school girl uniforms and 5 mannequins (1 child mannequin) dressed the same way.  And if you donīt think it was creepy, picture this woman dancing herky-jerky along in the middle of the night to thumping techno music.  ....moving right along...

Scary, scary, SCARY lady.

Picnic spot

Unfortunately, despite the fact that San Sebastian is the vacation town of Spain (it was unknown until a Spanish queen was told by her physican to summer here in order to recover from a sickness, which drew her court and inevitable hangers-on), it was a bit cool and drizzly the next day.  So, instead of hitting the beach, Lisa and I wandered around the relatively small town and coastline, grabbing a picnic by a scenic spot by the ocean.

Picnic food

That night was relatively uneventful - some more pretty good food and a bunch of reading.  As a side note, I have now consumed 1/3 of a book on tape that I started before the trip (so about 13 hours since I left Boston) and 3 books.  I am now down to old newspapers and some more audiobooks.  All this in a week!  ...Iīm loving it!  Time to hit the bookstore, though.)


And that brings us to today.  Waking up to more rain, we grabbed a quick breakfast when I suddenly noticed that a rowing-like race on the TV in the restaurant was taking place in a harbor that looked suspiciously like San Sebastianīs.  Turns out I was right!  We scarfed down our breakfast and hoofed it to the harbor where we watched a couple races of what resembles the offspring of a mating between a Samoan dragon boat and an 8 man racing shell.

Spanish dragon boat

These guys were impressive, doing 4 lengths in the open sea with decently high waves.  And the crowd was very into it - we suspect they were all regional or city teams, so each boat had 10 or 20 people with flags, horns, and very loud grandmothers screaming their hearts out.  Great fun.

Finally, finally!, the sun came out during the race as well, so Lisa and I hit the beach for a few hours.  No sunburns to report (at least none that have caused us to hurt that badly yet)...although we did see some unfortunately topless women and, later, one unfortunately bottomless man, waltzing around the beach.  To clear your mind of that thought, Iīll leave you with a great view of the harbor of San Sebastian.  Tomorrow itīs shopping in the morning and a 2 hour bus to Biarritz, France.  Happy Sunday! 

San Sebastian from above