First day in San Sebastián

I am writing this from a small plaza in San Sebastian (yes, I brought my laptop. Don’t worry, it’s always with me). I’m watching kids play soccer.

I started this trip out with only 3 hours of sleep. Yeah… probably didn’t need to go to that club last night, but oh well. It was fun, and I’m doing all right.

I got the airport bus (so much cheaper than a taxi) but it took forever. Traffic was pretty bad I guess. I finally got to the airport but was at the wrong terminal. Iberia’s Spanish flights are only in terminal C so I had to run over there. I made my flight, but dang it, next weekend I am going to plan on being there 2.5 hours early.

Ah, I took some pictures of my plane and the bus that took us to it. They often do that here in Europe. I don’t think I have encountered that in the U.S. You get to your gate, have your ticket ripped, and then board a bus that takes you to your plane that’s out in the middle of a massive cement, um, parking lot. I’d show you the pictures now, but I didn’t bring my cord to plug in my camera.

I tried to get some sleep on the plane, but that didn’t work too well. I then tried to write some postcards (speaking of which, Mom, did you get the birthday postcard I sent?). Apparently a lack of sleep does affect me. I was making so many writing mistakes. I’m better now though. Nice and awake. I’m planning on going to bed early tonight because I’ll be catching a train to go to Bilbao. You will hear more about that later.

I get to San Sebastian and realize I have no idea how to get to the city from the airport. I hopped on a bus and asked the guy in front of me which stop I wanted. He said he was from Barcelona. Okay, I thought, he only speaks Catalan. Well, I later realized that no, he speaks Spanish too, but he’s from Barcelona, so I shouldn’t ask him. The two of us later asked these two nice ladies what stop we wanted. It was cool. I actually got the information I needed, all in Spanish.

I got to my hostel and was greeted by this guy who didn’t seem happy to have a customer. I guess he wasn’t the owner, though, so I’m not sure if he wasn’t a customer himself. I guess the guy who runs the place is rarely there, which, to me, makes checking in difficult. Oh well, when I get back hopefully he’ll be there.

I then just wondered around. I talked to some more people in this bar place. It was a group of old men. It was kind of hard to understand them with their old man voices (plus, heck, I just have a hard time with Spanish), but it was fun anyway.

I tried to go walk up this mountain that my guide book talked about, but I ended up at some kind of amusement park that was closed for winter (oh, and it is a bit chilly here. At least, colder than BCN). It was also cloudy, so the sunset I was looking for didn’t work out, either. Eh, oh well.

Más o menos (more or less. The Spanish love this saying) that brings me to right now. I’ll post this later on tonight when I get Internet at my hostel. I figure I’ll just say what I did, and then when I get back to Barcelona, I’ll post pictures and maybe go into my deeper details.

And I'm back. It's 9pm and I'm about to go to bed. I'm waking up in about 7+ hours to catch that train to Bilbao. When I left that plaza where I beautifully wrote the above stuff, I decided to head back to my hostel and shower. I did all of that and finally checked in with the owner.

I then bounced and went to this tapas place. In a nut shell, tapas are plates with a tiny portion of one thing. It's very Spanish. The general idea is to get several of these. I really haven't had too many tapas, so tonight was fun. I was actually going to go tapas hopping (pssh, forget bar hopping) but ended up staying at this one place called Jauntxo (Wan-cho. tx is a ch sound in Basque). Apparently it's a famous and popular place. Gotta love my guide book. Thank you, Carrie.

Anyway, while I was there, I talked to yet another person. He was from Algeria. He was a pretty interesting guy. And when he was leaving, he bought me a Coke. Man, San Sebastianians are super nice!

I then got some dark chocolate and walked around this one area of the city (I promise better descriptions later). As I was walking, this one guy sitting on some steps asked how I was doing in Spanish. I, at this point proud of all my Spanish speaking adventures thus far, decided to stop and talk instead of just saying "good" and keep walking. Well, after some confusion, I finally heard the word "hash." Apparently I missed the Spanish slang for, "What do you need?" I then walked away and one of his buddies came up to me and asked me the same thing. I said, "No no," and kept walking. Interesting. And I have to admit, I feel kinda cool that Spaniards tried to sell me drugs in Spanish. Am I really that Spanish acting though??

Okay, I'm going to bed. Take care, everyone. Have a great weekend. I'll post again either Saturday or Sunday.