San Sebastian

30th November

We arrived in San Sebastian at 6pm last night. Lovely town, we must come back here.

The journey was not without some drama as we forgot we had crossed the meridian and entered the wrong details in the satnav. Entered East instead of West.... Took us about 20km in the wrong direction.

Then it took us three attempts in San Sebastian going around the same set of roundabouts to find the entrance to the camping car park. Then when we parked we discovered the parking meter would not dispense tickets. So after a discussion with the municipal police who arrived to check tickets, we got a hand written one for €3, and was told this would be enough until Monday 2^nd. Later find they have refilled the paper in the machine and printed our ticket, stuck under our window wipers, thanks Spanish guys, that is brilliant, 2 nights free!

We went out for dinner and stopped at the first café we came to, La Vaca – “the cow”.  (I think this is Catalan rather than Spanish) 

The place was cow-themed complete with the cow who laughed “La Vach qui Rit” (Carol says it is the laughing cow) and numerous cow themed pictures. The food was disappointing, Carol had pork fillet with egg and chips, and this looked like bacon eggs and chips. I had a hamburger with chips and salad. The salad turned out to be potato salad with tinned veg in mayonnaise. At least we had two cold beers, and all for €20. Spanish bull to all that!

It rained overnight and is still raining this morning. We are dry and warm, and still have gas, so we can have heating, cooked breakfast and a hot shower. If we run out of gas now, we can nip across the border to France and change our French bottle. It is only 55km to Biarritz, and there are a few villages just over the border where there will be gas for sale. If we buy Spanish gas we need a new set of gas pipe and adaptor and besides an empty cylinder to exchange. So a trip to France for gas appears to be a good idea, even if the cylinder is not quite empty.

We have 3 days to finish our road trip and decide what we want to do before catching the ferry on Tuesday at 10am. No doubt we shall spend the night close to the ferry terminus.  Hopefully we might catch a few more vendors bending the rules on selling fruit by the road! Perhaps he did not know the meaning of "Prohibida la venta"?

We enjoy walking around the town, which is very pretty in late Autumn colours, and great architecture, down to the promenade on the sea front. It has an English feel with neatly clipped foliage and pretty white wrought iron railings. We have a coffee and cake in the restaurant overlooking the sea, all for about €5. There is an indoor tennis club, with large glazed sides, and we watch a couple of young tennis players on clay, indoors. There is lovely sculpture all around, I think this is the collection of lost bicycle locks....or is it hoola hoops?

If our gas runs out we will nip over into France to replace it, since this will be easier than getting the whole new Spanish gas thing going. We shall see, making it up as we go!