Spain Day 5

Sunday morning we had to set our alarm as we were meeting Tim and Esther. We checked out of our hotel, ate the food we bought the night before and headed up to their appartment with our luggage. We were a little early but we had a chance to check our email. Then we walked to church, it was an english speaking United Methodist church held on the campus of Madrid University but in the building of the Madrid campus of Suffolk University of Boston. There were some really enthusiastic people there. The gospel was not preached. As Barack Obama had just been elected as president there was great rejoicing and focus on that during the service. We sang some nice songs and the people were very friendly but we weren't really fed, as it were. Tim and Esther usually go to a more Reformed service (they told us) but it is in Spanish so they thought we might benefit from this service more. I'm glad we did something, anyway.

Then we grabbed some fresh baguettes, cream cheese, chocolate and a bottle of wine and headed to Parque del Ouest. It was a beautiful, warm and sunny day. We relaxed and chatted for a couple of hours.

Then we grabbed our bags and made our way to the bus station. It was a bit confusing there but we found our way on the right bus after almost getting on the wrong one. It was a five hour trip up to San Sebastian through some really cool scenery. We left at 4pm and with a half hour stop in Lerma, we arrived at 9:30pm.

At our stop, Reuben didn't get off the bus fast enough so the driver left and closed the door behind him. I couldn't figure out how to open the bus door from the outside. There were others trying to get off too so I was in a bit of a panic. Not knowing a word of Spanish I tried to find the bus driver in a sea of other travellers. There were 4 other buses stopped here all at the same time. It was a zoo. Thankfully, I didn't need to use the washroom as the line up was insane. And you couldn't get away from the smoke. Even out in the parking lot! Finally, as I was making my way inside to figure out what to do some guy on the bus caught the attention of one of the other drivers and he let them out. What an adventure.

We passed through some amazing scenery including going through the Cantabrian mountain range. As we went down towards the coast, the bus went careening around corners. The lanes are significantly smaller here than in Canada and we passed some large lorries. I couldn't even look sometimes!!

Once in San Sebastian, we had no idea where we were as we didn't have a map of the city. The bus stop was near a traffic circle and a fancy hotel. Reuben decided to go inside and ask someone. And the desk clerk knew some English and gave us a tourist map of the city and pointed out where we had to go. It was about a 20 to 25 min walk to our hotel. It was a beautiful night. We could already feel the moisture in the air from being close to the ocean even though we couldn't see it yet.

It took a bit of searching to find our hotel as the odd numbers on one side of the street didn't seem to have even counterparts on the other side. But finally, we reached it. We had to buzz to be let in and it was on the second floor of the building. The receptionist/owner was a super friendly older lady. She let us in to our room and our jaws dropped!! We were looking directly out on the ocean. There was only the boardwalk between us and the water. It was brilliant!!

The sound of the ocean waves was mesmerizing. After settling in, we hit the town for some food. We ended up at a small tapas bar and had a couple of cervesas of beer and some tapas.

This guy was slicing up a jamon (leg of pork). They had this stuff everwhere hanging from the ceiling. It's a real delicacy here and each leg costs a good bit of money. It's smoked/cured. We had it on slices of bread with cheese. I had some spanish tortilla and Reuben tried all sorts of fishy delights.