blue water, green grass [getaria & san sebastian, spain]

I signed up to go on the IES trip to San Sebastian before I really knew anyone. I figured I would have at least one friend on the trip. I was wrong. Luckily, the beauty of the Basque country (or Vasco) made up for my lack of companions, and my only complaint was having to be stuck with anyone at all - I would have much rather done the entire thing alone. I met a handfull of nice people, but the rest just plain sucked.

Now, about the actual place... As soon as we flew in over the bright green rolling hills and bright orange rooftops I knew I was in love - yes, again. I forgot what green looks like, Barcelona being so dry, and I forgot how pretty it is. It was like driving into North Carolina in late spring - just so noticeably green. This is of course due to the large amounts of rain that fall in the Basque region, but we had what was considered an extremely lucky weekend and enjoyed the sun and a few fluffly white clouds.

The first place we stopped coming out of the adorable Bilbao airport was the small fishing village of Getaria. One of the first things you notice about the Basque is their strange language known as Euskara. Even linguists are stumped on its origins because it is so unique and unrelated to other languages in the world. Lots of X's... Anyway, Getaria was phenominal. It was small and colorful and had some unbelievable views of the ocean. Not to mention the mountains just rise right off of the beach. Like I said, blue water, green grass. I couldn't get enough of the town, but we were back on to the bus all too quickly to get to San Sebastian.

I suppose San Sebastian would be considered a city, but it seems more like a historically-enriched resort town to me. The beach is enormous, and in the shape of a shell that's split in half at high tide and one complete beach at low tide. It's famous among surfers for its incredible waves, though they weren't much when we were there. That's my one complaint (if one could complain) about the Mediterranean - no waves. We went down to the end of the wall that surrounds the cove to where it meets the rocky coast and watched the waves crash and explode into the air.

After that we did a short tour of the old city (standard old town), went back to the hotel for a nap, and then went out for some dinner. I had to tag along with some girls I didn't know, which was all going great until I realized I had encountered another group of 'I-really-just-want-a-hamburger' girls. The Basque region is renowned world-wide for its phenominal food and we got hamburgers. "I'm lactose intolerant." "I don't like seafood." "I think they only serve fish there." It took everything in my body not to begin pounding every one of them. After that I really wanted to stay in the city for the carnaval activities going on all around us but of course they wanted to go back to the hotel because it was raining. I just thought that made it better... I really missed Sam.