Gateaux Basque

I had this seven years ago when I was in the vicinity. It's two cookie dough filled with a cream or cherry filling. The cherry filling is harder to find. The cream filling is quite ubiquitous and available everywhere. This cafe only had the cream, so cream it was. It was still pretty good.

San Sebastian, food

 Pintxos, an olive, a sardine, and a pimento on a toothpick makes one delicious bite.

 Food is laid out on the bar counter, each bar has their own selection and the cook keeps the food coming all day long. One goes in, orders a few bites and a drink, sits and chats for a while. Then goes to the next bar and do it all day long or all night long. It's a good life.

 Salt cod or baccala is really good.

 Coquille St Jacques, not so good. I've had better.

And of course, a glass or two of sangria.

San Sebastian, the Atlantic coast

 The lady in the center is topless. I tried to zoom in on her. This is very common in beaches all over Europe, to take one's top off.

Espadrilles? Of course, for beach going. San Sebastian has a very beautiful coastline. I've grown up next to the water and finds comfort in living close to it, I'm minutes away from the Pacific ocean. The Atlantic coast is just as beautiful.

San Sebastian, Spain

 The old town or the 'parte vieja' is a small area, 8 blocks by 8 blocks. The lower levels are where the shops, bars and souvenir stores are. The pensions are on the upper level which makes it very convenient, party all night and walk upstairs to sleep. Except if you don't party, don't expect to sleep because it is very noisy till the wee hours of the morning.

 Interspersed between pedestrain only alley ways are old churches.

This is your typical party town in Spain. Like its counterparts, whether it be Barcelona, Madrid or others in Spain, it has a lively atmosphere. I was in Santiago de Compostela 7 years ago, the place is quiet after dark. I remember being in the cathedral square at 9pm, I was the only one there. I had to meditate and say goodbye to the place. San Sebastian was a lot of fun.

Streets of old Burgos

 Tantalising bar signs asking you to come in for some cheap drinks.

 Jamon, like elsewhere in Spain, are hung in almost every store.

Europe has a love affair with Nutella. I've never seen such huge jars of Nutella and its everywhere, in every restaurant. It's OK though I'm not a Nutella fan.

The Spanish word for peach, 'melocoton.' These are quite tasty peaches, we don't get these in the USA. I had to have a few while I was there.
We would leave the next morning for San Sebastian. Trying to get a taxi at 6am in Burgos was a little hard. We strolled the streets in the dark of what seemed an eternity before finally seeing a lone taxi. The train station was 5 miles away. It was still dark at 7 am when we left Burgos on the train bound for San Sebastian. It was the night train originating from Lisbon passing through Madrid on its way to Hendaye, the border between Spain and France. There, at Hendaye, people would transfer to a Paris bound train. We would get off at San Sebastian, just miles away from Hendaye.

The church next door

 An immense font, not the biggest I've seen. The font at St Vitale's baptistry in Ravenna has a font the size of almost a swimming pool.

 This church had an interesting and unusual altar piece.

 This was another church. Lonely planet said as one walks around Burgos we'll be bound to stumble on numerous other churches. If they mentioned all of them, we wouldn't be stumbling on them. The idea was to stumble upon them. We stumbled on a couple of them, there wasn't time to stumble on all of them.