52 - Pavées & Pintxos - Pasaia & St. Sébastien

Saturday, March 30 - Pasaia & San Sébastien

Let the long weekend commence!  Monday, April 1, is a bank holiday in France so I've got a 3 day weekend.  I'd gotten in touch with a friend who would be in the area for the Easter holiday visiting family.  In true spring fashion, the forecast for the weekend was all over the place so any plans had to have flexibility and backup options; fortunately, today's plan is to profit from the sunshine and mild temps to enjoy a hike.  

We met up in Biarritz, where lunch supplies were procured and I had the chance to say "hello" to her sister.  While I'd been hesitant to drive into Biarritz on my first day in France this trip, I've grown much more comfortable with handling the car (still not perfect).  It seemed to me there were more seagulls (les mouettes)  hanging around Biarritz on this day than I remembered during my last visits; it makes sense that a coastal town with a steady supply of tourists to snack off of would boast a decent seagull population.   

Our first stop enroute to the hike location was to a basque bakery in Bidart; this particular bakery stands out for being built in an old Basque water mill (moulin).  It was a cute little estate, one half housed a bakery and the other half seemed to be a restaurant with ample terrace space.  The bakery was cash only and surprisingly took my 100€ bill 😅  Nobody believed me when I said "J'ai cent cinq euros" until I showed the two bills in my wallet...

This sign included explanation in French, Basque, and Bearnais!  Plenty of vocabulary words for me here

Who's ready to mill some flour?

Interestingly, Basque water mills used a horizontal wheel instead of the partially submerged vertical wheels I'd usually envision.   

With a couple Basque sweets procured (a gateau Basque and a few sablés), we pressed onwards to Spain and the quaint town of Pasaia.  I found the town's aesthetic to be an interesting blend of old, new, residential, and commercial; a striking feature was the town being divided by a channel for the port.  There were also plenty of statues for Basque rowing and info about the maritime history of the area, including a boat museum and workshop (probably worth coming back to see).  The waterfront walk was nice and I'd like to take the ferry to the old town to see more next time.

A view of the 3 couronnes from the south; they don't really look like 3 crowns from this direction so I guess that's why they don't have a catchy name like that in Spanish and Basque.

To our left was a row of houses and shops, to the right was the harbor with fishing boats and cranes

Pasaia's old town is across the water, a ferry appears to run frequently.  The old town is nestled at the foot of the mountain Jaizkibel.

The channel / passage that potentially gives Pasaia it's name

Arrêt, stop, we're gonna crash!  The ship is certainly large whilst looming over a wall.  

We hiked from Pasaia to St Sébastien dealing with being hot and cold.  Lovely views of the coast, interesting rock formations, and burgeoning forest.  Hike finished on the beach of St Sebastian in a quarter I hadn't visited before. 

Exiting from the channel to the sea, or for us hikers, starting the climb up some irregular stone steps.

There's a castle-like building that I think serves as a lighthouse on the cliff to the left

Oh, and it has a silver dome

The whole mass on the other side of the channel is the mountain of Jaizkibel.

The hike may have been warm in the sun, good thing we're so cool 😎

Looks like a decent spot to break for lunch: a little ham, a little cheese, and some bread.  Ça vous dit?

I'd hoped to get a good photo of these gorges rouges (red throated) birds but ended up with a spectacular shot of a trash can 

I found it interesting that the area is both domesticated and wild at the same time.  Here's an old, overgrown stone bridge and we came across a few sections of ancient paved roads (les pavées chaussées)

I have a distinct memory from French class struggling to come up with the word for "pineapple" and saying pomme de pin.  In French, the fruit is l'anana (and I think most of the rest of the world follows closely) but on this hike I learned that what I call pine cones are les pommes de pin (literally pine apples) in French.  

I wonder what prompted the English to save pine apple as a word for a fruit they wouldn't know of until maybe the 1700s...

The photo doesn't capture the constant thunder of the waves during our hike

New ferns (I'm told they're les fougères) pushing up.

We found ourselves constantly peeling off and re-adding layers as we passed between shade, sun, inclinés, and declines. 

Can just make out the Spanish coast in the distance

We turned a corner and suddenly, Pride Rock.  

Now we can make out some of the mountains at the ends of San Sebastian.

A few seagulls at rest on the cliffs 

After this photo, I took a photo of a group of 4.  They started with a pose of their backs to the camera and then we took a few of them facing the camera.  I'd taken a step back and down from the platform for the 2nd pose but the reduction in height made that position miss a lot of the water.  My friend pointed this out in French (something along the lines of "it's missing the water behind"); what I thought I heard and couldn't believe was "they looked better from behind" 😂  

Google Lens says this is a camelia?

The Zuriola beach of San Sebastian 

We made it!  And not a minute too soon, the clouds were begining to think about rain

Just a few surfers out there today

We made our way to old town for pintxos in Cafe Vergara.  I had some Basque cider (it smells like a farm) and we chit chatted for a while.  My eyes were drawn to the tall pintxos, which made eating them tricky but I managed it one bite at a time.  The last time I'd visited San Sebastian, there was a large group of men filling up the street from this place, they were singing and occasionally cheering (I'm guessing when a goal was scored).

Rather than hike back, we took the bus back to Pasaia where the car was parked.  As we made it to the bus stop, it was noted that the people of St Sebastian preemptively make a like to enter the bus (something I'd completely overlooked last time).  Handling bus fare was super easy as the driver was able to break a 5 Euro bill for change and two fares.  Getting in the bus was easy; getting out of the bus was trickier...

We found the bus didn't seem to intend to let passengers off at whichever destinations they desired.  Stop after stop saw only people getting on and the exit doors staying closed.  As we approached our planned stop, we got out of our seats and made our way through the standing crowd to the door; we pressed the "stop" button on a nearby pole but nothing happened.  A nearby passenger motioned what we interpreted to mean that "this is the getting on stop, there's one down the road for getting off" or "you have to exit via the middle-of-the-bus door".  When the bus continued on, we made are way from the back door to the middle door.  When it turned out the "stop" buttons really didn't do anything, we were saved by a woman shouting for the bus driver to abrir la puerta to help us out.  A thousand thanks to her, else we might still be on that bus to this day... Fortunately the bus stop we managed to escape to was actually the closest to the car thanks to a pedestrian overpass.  

Later, we finished eating the goodies from the day, including strawberries (a guignette variety that looked a little different from any I've eaten) and gâteaus Basques.  It was a long, good day and Daylight savings time would start for Europe overnight.  I'm so glad I get to lose an hour of sleep twice this year, first in the US and now in Europe.