So, on our last night in Bordeaux, we got a message from our next host saying that he had to work until 7pm, so could not let us into the apartment until then. Bang went out first day on the beach!

Arrived at the train station in plenty of time for the train to San Sebastian, all we had to do was print off our tickets. Well, we got one out of the machine but not the second…so faced with a massive slow moving queue at the ticket counter and only 20 minutes till our train, the heart rate got a little elevated. Upon joining the queue, we found a nice French SNCF man that seemed to be pointing people to different places - so with my sweetest smile I tried to explain the problem. He was about to direct me back to the queue and then noticed the time of our train…after a bit of flirting with the nice lady behind the counter (him - not us!), he managed to get our second ticket - phew - panic over.

This was one of our shortest journeys so far and poor James ended up with someone eating a rather smelly egg across the aisle from him (he specifically wants to mention this as it's the second journey that he's been sat next to something/one smelly). Anyway, arrived in early afternoon…thankfully there was a refreshing sea breeze, but we still had 5 hours till we could dump the bags and go exploring. We sat in a beach bar for a few hours drinking lemon Fanta (a must for Spain!) and slowly grazing through some tapas…looking at the beach and weighing up whether it was worth getting everything covered in sand or not. We decided not in the interest of not dragging half the beach into our new place later.

We moved on from the beach bar and scoped out where our place was, nice and easy - on a road just off the beach - perfect! Still with a few hours left to check in, we thought we'd treat ourselves to a gin - first one of the holiday! It was here that I managed to add another bite to the collection of mosquito ones (luckily they are going down and now just look like old bruises)…bite…sting…who knows - but it bloody hurt!

Eventually, after what seemed like an age - 7pm came and off we went to check into our room for the next few nights. Another half an hour later and the guy eventually turns up! No worries, we got in ready to dump our bags and run out for a 15kg lighter explore, but the room wasn't ready so he was busy sorting that out. He didn't speak much English either so had got his mate round to help him and do a bit of translating (we think?) - it was all a bit odd. Nevertheless, we were in! Back out for dinner.

Yay! Beach time! … oh, it's cloudy. We took a walk into San Sebastian town along the beachfront which was lovely. Found somewhere for breakfast and planned the rest of the day. There's a big hill/fort/Santa Maria in between S.Sebastian and where we were staying so we headed up to the top - we thought all this walking we were doing would be making us fitter?! Ah…it was that damn midday sun again. Oops! Views were stunning and hooray! The sun was out. Back down the hill, kit up and off to the beach. Ahhhhh. Bliss.

We made a concerted effort today to not spend much money, and it was working. I found a tapas bar on tripadvisor that was meant to be amazing, so we headed there for dinner and ordered a few of the small plates (between 2-3 Euros each). It's always fun ordering from a non-English menu (and not just in Spanish, in Basque - so there weren't many words we recognised!)…we knew that there would be some potatoes and some kind of ravioli that turned up - the rest would just have to be a surprise. It was Amazing - ended up with some roasted new potatoes with aioli dip, Ox-cheek (we think) in a rich sauce, Iberico pork chunks (again, we think) with chorizo and some Ham croquettas…yummy yummy yummy - and all for under 20 Euros (including 4 small beers)! Definitely rating this one on trip advisor. It was beginning to get a bit stormy outside and my leg was aching from my bite/sting, so we headed back to our place to catch up on some Breaking bad and get an early night…easier said than done when there's a few bars across the road and some kind of Jazz festival happening on the beach!

So, it's out last day in San Sebastian, tonight we head off on a night train bound for Lisbon. We've been trying to see our host to confirm that we're ok to leave our bags here until later today, but as yet (12.30), he's not surfaced and we haven't seen him since we checked in! It's been a bit overcast and still a bit grey from last night rain so not exactly beach weather, so we're off to while away a few hours and mooch around the town. Both excited about our night train - we loved the one we did in Vietnam - and tomorrow, Lisbon. We get in super early, but our new hosts have said we can drop our bags off as soon as we arrive - happy days.

Adios amigos!

xxx