donostia/san sebastian

A winter twilight on the Playa de la Concha in Donostia, the Basque name for San Sebastian, a toss of the wave away from the French coast...[driving through Bayonne and Biarritz in the Pays Basque a few years ago, we pique-niqued royally high up on a cliff while watching the Atlantic surf crashed over brave rubberized men perched precariously on long slippery boards!]
This here in Spanish Basque country is also a well-fed and pampered town, the elderly leisured class always immaculately groomed and highly polished and full of sea air vigor...while the young surfers rock the waves on another beach and the seasoned fishermen disappear into the horizon...

We had our fill of hardy pintxos from some of the many tabernas in the old town where we stayed and stocked up on Basque yogur [the best!] and big bars of turron de chocolate...

We walked the port and beaches and narrow streets until dark and the breezes blowing in from the Golfo de Vizcaya had stiffened a few degrees chillier - turning us inland again, heading south towards the warmer heart of Espana...

 

pamplona/iruna

Pamplona...Iruna...basking in the kingdom of Navarre...
where the sun also rises, but did not show itself to us...
where the drizzle-drenched streets narrow through tall tight buildings in the casco viejo [old city]...
where we [disappointedly] did not run into any rampaging bulls...
where Hemingway still stands guard in front of the third largest bull-ring in the world...
where even the most foolhardy pilgrims sat this weekend out to indulge in more comfort pintxos [Basque tapas]...
where we set foot on the slippery bridge of the departure point for the spanish leg of the El Camino de Santiago, only to wander as far as the cavernous and populous Café Iruna where we were no longer the loneliest and hungriest people in a softly raining Spain...