San Sebastian

The bus to San Sebastian was about 4 hours but it went very quickly thanks to copious amounts of sleep. The hostel was different to the others, more like a shared apartment. Christina, Gordon and Sarah were the hosts, Gordon and Sara were American.

An immediate tour of the town was in order, old buildings, urban decay and a surf beach, what more do I need, sun! At the top of a hill overlooking the entrance to the harbour there is a fort built by Napolean; well not by Napolean personally, I'm sure he, like Augustos, had access to cheap labour. I'm not sure how the Duke of Welly managed to kick the French out it was certainly a robust and imposing structure with a number of canons. The battle that saw Napolean defeated at San Sebastian destroyed the old town and it was rebuilt in the early 1800s.

The local Basque language is totally different from the Spanish languuage. They use the letter x a lot and they form their letters differently, if I had to guess I would say it had Greek origins but no one could tell me and factual information about the origin of the language. They have a strange drink here called Kolimotxo (kol-ee-mo-cho) which is red wine and coke, not sure what they see in it personally it made a perfectly good drop of red taste like a perfectly bad drop of red mixed with coke.

It was off the bar that evening with a young German chap and Gordon and Sarah from the Hostel to watch football. We were later joined by a French/Canadian couple from the hostel and a pair of Russians ladies. This was very exciting to me because when I got asked a question with a “yes” answer I got to say jawohl, oui, da, si to cover all basis. I can't claim to have invented the line, infact it came from an episode of Get Smart, but I think I could claim to be the first one to have used it legitimately.