6/24: San Sebastian

After I posted yesterday, we went out to go see the much-talked about bonfires. It turned out to be a mini-bonfire party for the kids last night. Heaps of kids ages 7-15 or so were burning their schoolbooks on the beaches in celebration of the end of the school year. I guess they do this because they won´t be allowed to go to the big bonfire celebrations they have tonight for Summer Solstice. Apparently they even have a bonfire in their Plaza Mayor, which used to be a bull-ring.

This morning we had toast and fruit for breakfast, then got directions to Monte Iguelda, the other little mini-mountain around here. It´s a nice walk along the two main beaches here, except that the boardwalk was super packed because there was a triathlon going on this morning. So it was a bit of work making our way through the throngs of people. Once we got near the mountain where the funicular (old-timey train) starts, it got less hectic, though. After a bit of hunting, we found what seemed to be the pedestrian path, and by path I mean walk along the side of the street as it winds up the mountain and hope not to get creamed by the expensive cars and dinky mopeds whizzing around the turns. Eek. It´s a bit of a walk even from our hostel to the base of the hill, and it´s a fair walk up a fairly steep incline to get to the top, but the views are incredible, and the coastline is really amazing. It´s a lot of very green cliffs and such, with deep blue ocean and seagulls floating around. The coastline actually reminds me a lot of northern california, weirdly enough. We got to the top, where there´s an amusement park, but we weren´t planning to go in, so we just turned around and came back.

We had waited too long to buy wine for lunch, given that it´s sunday and goddamn everything closes on sundays, but one of the guys that works in the hostel helped us out buying bottles of local cider takeaway from a restaurant. For lunch we had a huge salad with onion and tomato and avocado and homemade vinaigrette and baguette and two bottles of cider. Then we took a nap until the newest crop of busabout people turned up and made a huge ruckus and left the door to our room open to the common room so it was super loud, so we got up and came here.

Later we´ll be going to the real bonfires, hopefully taking some nice pictures. I´m trying to upload our pictures at the moment, but it´s seriously taking forrreeevvverrr. I´ve been online now for 45 minutes and it has not uploaded a single picture. Fuck this lack of high-speed internet.