Our room in the hotel is wierdly located in that to get to it we need to traverse the breakfast area. Realised later on in the day that if we leave the rom door open in order to vent the musty smell (suspect it's due to water sitting underneath the floating floor in the bathroom) everyone in the common eating area can see right in. Luxury San Sebastian style. Still, they pitch themselves as eccelectic so there you go.
We had a 10 am appointment with the walking tour and a 25min walk into town to get there so it was comfortable start to the day. Was hoping to stop at a shop to grab some replacement sunscreen as this here bloggers snosh is glowing and needs protection.
Unfortunately being Sunday morning nothing was open. We did manage to get some later at an exorbitant price in the heart of the old town. The price of protection in the modern world...The tour ( as always) was great. Got some insights into the history and culture of the place. It's remarkably different from the rest of Spain we've seen to date. E.g. it's history resonates from being a luxury hideaway for the monarchy. No mention of the Roman's or the Moores marauding through here, setting up shop and marketing gourds as a commodity before some other race comes through on a crusade pushing scones and jam as the go to. This local sitting on the byways of oceanic routes was populated by the Basque's who were doing very nicely with their own little fiefdoms and thus cultures defined by the mountainous ridges with the only real way of getting from one to another was via the sea. Nowadays they have tunnels carved though them (80kms per hour please) which annoyingly means people have to seriously get along.
So the towns history is one of the hierarchy wanting to spend time here and whilst it's built to olde' worlde' charm it's a bit of a farce as compared to the southern cities. Apparently it's been totally burnt down a few times (some French architect came up with the idea of houses made of sandstone i.l.o wood and they're still here...whoa..three little pigs thinking there.) through various battles and wars etc.They sided with the Germans in WW2 (only because the dude in power at the time was more right than left - hey Pauline ..lest we forget) and got away with it by only sacrificing a small amount of useless locals to that cause.
They've had their revolutions and the locals still want independence, even though they sort of have it financially anyway (all state taxes, that are then passed on to the feds). Our guide didn't really want to be drawn into the whole debate, however his attitude resonated
.. One country (get along), one continent (get along), one world (get along), one solar system (get along)...etc.
So they have an old town, built in place of one that had battlements, a newer town built in the 1950s ( thus validating the previous comment about the Carlton tower blocks) and the Gross area. Which apparently used to be really so and one expects that's where the term originally came from. Nowadays it's full of surfing yuppies and is actually quite pleasant. So it's now the Abbotsford/Cliton Hill/Northcote vibe part of town ...with a beach. Unfortunately they let a minimalist architect build a couple of large square blocks on prominent location called them Cubes and then let everyone argue about their artistic relevance.
We managed to hit town at exactly the same time as a multitude of locals from the surrounding area for the rowing regatta.
Woo whoo. 4 days of trails and tribulations as they group wise paddle furiously out to sea, turn around and head back into the harbour, followed by a flotilla of powered vessels and watched by tens of thousands around the shores and adorning cliffs and many more on TV (as the broadcast vans are there). The notion if a couple of Aussie tourists having a quiet stroll around a quaint seaside Spanish town was quickly squashed. The place was heaving.
After the walking tour, blogger dragged non-blogger around the promotory looking for a good slow TV capture point and was disappointed to find out ( yet again) it's all inaccessible until after sunrise.
Went down to the main beach where non-blogger walked through the crowds to test the temp of the water. Wasn't inspired enough to make the effort to return (especially without shade as by now the sun was beating down).
It was pretty hot and muggy as we struggled back to the distant hotel room where the traditional siesta kicked in after walking so many km's.
Sort of re-energised, we struggled for while but eventually managed to get onto the town bike hire app and subsequently rode back into town instead of the long arduous walk. Here the local food thing is pintxos where they have lots of small(ish) serves of pretty much anything mostly sitting on top of slices of bread sticks. Lots of seafood though combined with anything else they feel is appropriate. Delicious stuff, combined with some very good local vinos we did a hop to hop thing through a few places before ending up in a pretty horrible one at the end, chosen because it was empty, and it was so for good reason.
Blogger failure here, ended up standing out the front of the laundromat next door to finish the drinks (stemmed wine glasses - very classy). On the bright side though it was still cobblestoned streets and the cool sea breeze was preferable over the smoke stained air inside (and without the loud screaming of some foreign sports commentary banging on about inconsequential events on field far far way).
Decided to stroll all the way back to the pad as the storm clouds in the distance were starting to make their presence felt. That could be the last of our hot balmy weather..
Seemed to have dealt with the smell of the room by leaving the aircon on and the door to the outside balcony open. Only problem there is it opens to a wide canyon of 10 story high blocks of rooms/ apartment balconies/windows which at the bottom is where all the bins get emptied, staff relax with ciggies, cars grind up and down tight parking lot ramps. Ahhh suburan life in tower blocks. Apparently for a significant majority of peeps in the world this is home.
Long live the bubble as the double glaxed door closes for the night.
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