Last weekend I popped over to San Sebastián to meet up with my old friend Aaron. I took the 8:10AM train from Bordeaux and got to the city at around 12PM after a brief stop in the half-French, half-Spanish border city Hendaye. There are unfortunately no direct trains between France and Spain. San Sebastián was gorgeous, its red-roofed buildings crowded against each other, pressed against the Atlantic and cradled by the Pyrenées. From the hilltops we could clearly see the mountains, their pastoral peaks sloping upwards from the earth like clay mounds pinched by celestial fingers.

In the fields beyond: long-haired bulls, lazing goats; determined Camino-hikers inching closer to Santiago, seashells hanging proudly from their backpacks. On the city streets: hungry visitors housing plates of pintxos (calamari, patatas bravas, slices of fresh bread adorned with any combination of jamón, battered fish, octopus, sliced tomato, cheese, et cetera), runners stretching their legs before the annual San Sebastián Half Marathon, moppy-haired sailors dressed for Sunday’s regatta; families dressed in all blue, dancing to trumpet and drum, parading for Basque independence on Aberri Eguna (also known as “Fatherland Day,” an annual day of protest and celebration of Basque heritage, first promoted by the Basque nationalist movement in the 1930’s and which has since become as much a cultural fete as a political one). It was a weekend of wandering and munching.