6/22: Travel Day.... Madrid to San Sebastian!

This morning we got up all early, got the last little bits of our stuff together, and headed off to the Busabout pickup point. We decided when we walked there yesterday that on the real time we would take the metro. Didn´t quite count on rush hour being so dang early, though. The first train, that was pulling away as we walked down, was PACKED. And I mean packed like sardines, with people bulging at the doors. eesh. We walked to the middle of the next train and it wasn´t so bad, but anything is bad when you have a huge bag like we did. I always feel like a huge ass blimp when we have our packs all set. Shannon would tell me I´m a blimp anyway, though, and she´d be right. hah.

The bus ride was nice and uneventful, with a nice lunchtime stop in Burgos to see the Cathedral and have lunch. I think they were required to make the stop. Anyway, it was one of our longer trips (8 hours) and it wasn´t bad at all, especially since our second half movie was Love, Actually, which I actually love (man, I kill myself.). We got in to San Sebastian around 4:30, and it was almost as cold as it was in Burgos, which was pretty dang chilly. Got all checked in, and though our hostel is on the 4th floor (what they call the 3rd floor here)I really like it. The staff are all really young Aussies, and they just hang out and surf and stuff.

We went on a Pintxos tour tonight(20€, all food/drink included), kind of like a pub crawl but an eating crawl, which is really more my type of crawl. The guide, who is also the guy running our hostel, is really into the local cuisine, and pintxos (pronounced Pinchos) are a lot like the tapas in Southern Spain. We had patatas bravas, which we´d had before, calamari, these prawn things, some mushrooms like we make at home, roasted pimientos, a beef dish, a fried, milk-poached cod dish, some pork thing that some whores at all of before I could try, and another cod dish that I also didn´t get much of because of said whores. The food was very good and the guide knew a lot about it, so that was good. What sucked was that there were 32 people that signed up, and they were all young people dressed like they were going clubbing, which they probably were later. Most of them I think didn´t eat before it, so they kept gobbling food, so a lot of people didn´t get to try some things because certain people just hovered over the food hogging it. We also tried this local cider that is a natural, flat cider that you pour from very high to aerate it, and drink like a shot (so you only pour a shot amount). It´s rather tart, but has a nice, crisp, different taste to it. We also had a Basque white wine that smells and tastes like a Riesling without the sugar. Very nice.

We left the tour early when we discovered that the ´free shot´at the last bar was actually a shot of schnapps, and had ice cream by ourselves instead (which was soooooooooooooooo good). We really just don´t do well in huge groups that think that the point of traveling is to get wasted and stay out dancing all night.

Also, I forgot to mention that on our last night we went out to have Patatas Bravas at this place that´s known for them (they´re fried potatoes with a spicy sauce). The Patatas Bravas were so-so, but we also ordered pig ears. And I tried them. They were kind of like under-cooked bacon, but with ear cartilage in the middle. Very clearly eating an ear. I wouldn´t eat them again, but they weren´t horrible.