Not so sunny skies in San Sebastian

The rain in Spain falls mainly on . . . San Sebastian.

We arrived around 1:30 PM and checked into our hotel, Pension Kursaal. San Sebastian is a beautiful coastal city with river flowing through the middle and lined with massive rectangular blocks. It is truly beautiful, rain or shine. And boy did it rain. And the wind blew. At points we even saw snow and heard hail. It gave us time to do laundry finally. (We did it by hand and saved 20 euros. The hotel included a heated drying rack, which was beyond awesome.)

Determined not to miss the city, we grabbed an umbrella from the hotel and hiked up Mount Urgull, a series of batteries built in the 16th century and held variously by the Spanish, the French and the English. We had the place to ourselves, no surprise thanks to the weather. It was a coordinated effort to hike, hold the umbrella, and take pictures without getting the camera wet. The view is wonderful - you can see all of San Sebastian and the storm rolling in.

We toured the San Telmo Museum on Tuesday. It is free every Tuesday - another win for our budget! We started with the Gaul exhibit (what seemed like hundreds of clasps, or fibulas) then continued through fine arts, modern times and basque art. The church exhibit included a spectacular video display maximizing the church's gigantic wall space, using two to three simultaneous projectors at a time.

Safety first! Use the hand rail? Electric stairs? 

We eventually got to the beach just in time for really heavy rain and winds and that's when we gave up. It was time to stop touring and just eat and drink. And this is the best part of San Sebastian:

PINTXOS (pronounced peenchos) 

The bar tops everywhere are lined with these bite-size appetizers. Jason found out San Sebastian has more Michelin stars per capita than anywhere in the world and we would not be surprised if that is all in pinxtos. They range in price from 1-3 euros at the places we visited. You get a plate, pick your pintxos, and they give you the total at the end. We never ate a full meal the entire time we were there - just pintxos and drinks.

Now, pardon us while we indulge you in pintxos (since that's really all we have to show for San Sebastian ....

Next up, France! 

GoPro Video from our bike ride in Valencia

Madrid Madness

We arrived at our destination again with an agenda: to find an allen wrench for my camera rig. Not words Maren remembered from Spanish class apparently. Fortunately, we found la ferreteria and llaves allen.

Before checking in we toured the royal palace. Maren let me nerd out at the royal armory.  An amazing collection of armor and weapons mostly from the 15th and 16th century.  Saw a lot of really cool ornate firearms and a couple of Negroli helms.  The Royal Palace was absolutely magnificent too.  Afterwards we took a nap in the garden in front of the Palace, which was also very awesome.

For this stop, we stayed in the Way Hostel. It is a lively place. With our own room it is just a scaled back hotel with friendly front desk staff, communal kitchen and lobby littered with friendly people en route to places all over the world. They played selection of music (Queen, ABBA, White Stripes) until the wee hours of the night.

For lunch, We hit 100 Montaditos for sandwiches (a reddit recommendation) and tinto de verano. At 1-1.5 euros per montadito (think slider sized mini-baguette sandwiches) and great variety, it was an affordable and yummy mix of ham, pork, cheese, squid and, of course, mayo.

I had emailed the owner of the hostel previously and mentioned that I would be traveling with my camera. I talked with him and his social media guy when we arrived and he offered to comp our stay if I filmed some of their activities for them. We joined Pablo and hostel guests for tapas y tinto de verano at La Tigre, a spot highly recommended to us on Reddit r/travel. Another win. It was traditional tapas so rather than ordering, they just bring them out plate by plate until you say stop.

Saturday we joined the free walking tour (with Erica from South America) and saw local spots including the royal theater and the San Miguel Market, which we visited for tapas and vino.  Below is an example of the type of b-roll I was getting for the hostel.

In the evening the Way crew offers homemade paella for 2 euros a person. The hostel lobby was a flurry of guests and great music for Jason's final shoot before we headed out on our own. We went to Casa Mingo for chicken, cider, and an empanada. Another recommendation for the win, Kevin!

Earlier we witnessed La Marcha de la Dignidad, a mostly peaceful demonstration against poverty and austerity in the city center. Walking home from dinner ~11 we noticed the city was packed with police armored up in riot gear.  We saw two big caravans of police vans (one of which was stopped at a burger king).  We got home to find out there had been violent outbreaks.

Altogether, Madrid was a welcome change of pace from Las Falles and the Way Hostel offered a great chance to talk to people (locals and travelers) and to take laid-back tour of the city. Thanks to everyone at the Way for a great stay!

Next up is a 5.5-hour train ride to San Sebastian for three nights. Time for the beach (and laundry)!

Onward to Madrid

The Market

The city was empty on Thursday so we visited the market and then rented bikes to ride the beach. Our hotel rented them for a discount and an affordable half-day rate. Riding in the streets was easy then we rode along the Jardines de Turia, an old riverbed.

We ate paella at El Coso (another great recommendation, Kevin!).  We ordered the house Valencian paella with chicken, rabbit, artichokes and snails. I let Jason enjoy the snails. After a jarra de sangria I wanted a nap but we made the ride home nonetheless. Jason got footage on his GoPro but will post later when we have hearty wifi and enough time to load the footage.

It was a lazy day after a week of Las Falles plus we had an early train to catch in the morning. Next up, Madrid!


Jason's pro AV skills hooking up the GoPro



La Playa

La Paella

La Crema, Falles de Valencia

La Mascleta

Wednesday was the final day of the festival. We watched the final mascleta in the afternoon then toured the city for most of the afternoon, checking out the rest of the displays and stopping for bunuelos and hot chocolate followed by agua de valencia.

In the evening, at 10, they start burning the displays, beginning with the small displays. For the remainder of the evening we followed the fireworks and the burnings until the last statue was burned at 2 a.m. You can watch some of the footage below.

Footage from La Crema, Falles de Valencia 2014.

Part way through the last clip the crowd surged backwards recoiling from the heat.  The footage is crazy for a while as I fought my way through all those people.  You can tell at the end that I am at the very front of the crowd.  It was blazing hot and you could feel bits of ash and debris raining down on you.

Here are a few more shots from La Crema. 

The burning begins

Fireworks in the Plaza

Burning resumes

The final burning

This guy got the best view in the house

Firefighters keep things under control. 

El fin. 

La musica y el pescado

Fish and bacon roll

After a few (12) hours of sleep to wear off jet lag and a late night of fireworks, we set out to see more of the festival. Note: All of these posts are written to a soundtrack of firecrackers being set off by adults and children alike all day in alleys and fields.

This morning I shopped while Jason did  reconnaissance about how we can print our train tickets this week. We found an internet café down the way that offers .15 euros per page.

Street musicians (http://youtu.be/-Tssah00Lsw)

It is only day two and things already got weird on our menu. Jason was determined to have a fish and bacon roll he spotted yesterday. The first bite tasted like nothing but salt. He quickly adjusted his fish-to-bread ratio and enjoyed it. Or so he says. I did not partake. The rest of the day included café con leche, pizza, and a kebab on the walk home. We also enjoyed cubalitros (mixed drink) of vodka and lemon soda or Fanta.

Amidst the marching bands, we found a group of street musicians we watched for quite some time. Please enjoy the video! http://youtu.be/-Tssah00Lsw

Back at the hotel, we found the Paramount channel playing random Paramount films dubbed in Spanish. I love it. Today we watched some westerns while resting before the La Nit de Foc, the nighttime fireworks at 1:30 a.m.
 

Nit de Foc fireworks

Packed streets in Valencia

Next up is the last day of Las Fallas. It is La Crema ("the burning") when they set the displays on fire. Stay tuned!




Welcome to Valencia!

Falles statue, like a Disney float on acid

We arrived in Valencia and caught the metro to the city center to find our hotel, Ding Dong Nuns. This week is Falles de Valencia, a celebration of St. Joseph and we got off the metro just in time for the Mascletas, the afternoon fireworks show. Which actually means we emerged from the subway, fresh off 21 hours of travel and still wearing our packs, into a packed city center. Nothing shakes off the fear of a new city like immediately jumping into a block party with the locals. What a show and what a way to start this trip!

Graffiti

We saw fireworks, toured the city center and had a beer all before finding our hotel. (Jason's justification: agua was 2 euros, cerveza was 1; he was saving us money, duh.) The city center is littered with large statues for Falles. They were gorgeous but a lot of their meaning was lost on us due to our lack of knowledge of local politics.

We are both equally amazed by the graffiti. It's everywhere and it's beautiful. And yet I can't help but think of Dimitri Martin and his take on indifferent graffiti.

Tinto de verano and cheese snacks

Jason leads the menu on this trip, so our late lunch was some sort of cheese plate. In reality, it tasted like a Handi-Snack cheese and cracker pack. Not complaining; just an observation. We also had tinto de verano which came highly recommended to us and did not disappoint.

We wandered the city, which is packed for the festival. Allegedly the population here doubles this time of the year. The streets are flooded with parades of costumes and marching bands. The dresses are the magnificent.

Patas bravas, calamari

Dinner exposed us to another rumor we had heard about Spain: Mayonnaise. And yep, our patas bravas and calamari came with mayo. Lots of it. Just shoveled on.

We rallied until 1 a.m. to see the final fireworks for the night. The city was still flooded with people, including drum lines and parades. The festival continues through Wednesday, then we gave ourselves a day to relax and recover, hopefully while many of the visitors flood out of the city before we depart on Friday morning. Hopefully we don't regret the decision to kick off this trip with a week-long block party, but oh well. You can't resist this city and its wonderful, welcoming spirit.

Viva las Falles!