Video Throwback Thursday

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Graffiti in Valencia

Valencia is an amazing city filled with amazing graffiti.  As we walked around the city we instantly noticed the crazy amount of top-notch guerrilla murals.  Hard to know exactly what conditions make it a hotbed of great graffiti but no other city we have visited so far has had even a fraction as much.  Below is a portion of the sweet graffiti pictures I took while we were there.

This is the alley/side street in front of our hotel.

The three below were in the nook at the back of the alley seen above.

Whoever did the three pieces pictured below is my favorite.  The first two were on the same street and the third one was across town.

We stopped to check out this old abandoned and dilapidated warehouse on our bike ride.  Not surprisingly it was filled with a bunch of cool graffiti.

And here are a several more randoms from throughout town . . .

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)!