Hopping Around Spain Again
It was September so that meant that Anna’s annual Euretina Congress was upon us once again, a four day conference being held this year in Barcelona, Spain. Our friends, Andy and Hayley, had recently moved to Weisbaden, Germany so it presented a great opportunity for us to on a holiday with them as well, one that would take place in San Sebastián, plus Andy and I could head back to Germany at the end to catch one of our favourite bands, but I’ll save that for another post, we don’t want to be late for the conference!
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
We boarded our Emirates flight just after midnight and it didn’t take long to realise that Emirates is far superior to any airline we’ve ever flown, a conclusion we reached over some drinks in their onboard bar and lounge. That’s where we saw a guy that was probably too young to drink try to act cool by asking the woman behind the bar, “So what’s in the martini? I know there’s olives.”. We had a layover in Dubai for a few hours and then due to the time difference we had finished the second leg of our flight and were checked into our hotel in Barcelona, the ironically named Hotel Room Mate Anna, at 10:00am the same day.
We had both slept reasonably well for a few hours on our two flights so we were able to shower and get changed, grab a cup of coffee, and do a bit of walking around the streets nearby, including seeing Casa Batlló which was just down the road from the hotel:
Casa Batlló is a building in the center of Barcelona, Spain. It was designed by Antoni Gaudí, and is considered one of his masterpieces. A remodel of a previously built house, it was redesigned in 1904 by Gaudí and has been refurbished several times. Gaudí’s assistants Domènec Sugrañes i Gras, Josep Canaleta and Joan Rubió also contributed to the renovation project.
However, it was kind of inevitable that after a couple of hours our unadjusted body clocks kicked in and we both started to fade despite how hard we tried to fight it, we just needed to return to the hotel for some proper sleep. It wasn’t a big deal, Anna was free all day tomorrow so we could check everything out then. We managed to drag ourselves out of bed early enough for some pre-dinner drinks before meeting up with some of Anna’s fellow conference attendees to hang out with for the rest of the night.
The bar on our plane, our hotel room, and some scenes from Barcelona that we were actually awake for:
Thursday, September 19, 2024
Anna wouldn’t need to attend the first day of the conference so we had the day to ourselves. It had been seven years since we were last in Barcelona, strangely enough to attend the exact same conference so we spent part of Anna’s only full free day the same way as the previous time, visiting Sagrada Família at her suggestion, a catholic basilica that still hasn’t been completed 142 years after construction began. The basilica was fantastic last time we were there and Anna had managed to score tickets to go up the top of the towers on that occasion, but this time we would have a guided tour around and throughout the building so it would be interesting to see how much work on the largest unfinished catholic church in the world had progressed since 2017. Well, let’s do a comparison to when we were last in town:
A fair bit of work had been done on the main tower and an extra spire outside had been built, however, being a place of worship the interior had already been completed the first time we were here. When we had visited that time we were told that the entire was to be completed in 2026, the anniversary of the death of Antoni Gaudí, the architect who had designed the basilica as well as Casa Batlló. When the same question was asked this time, however, our guide told us Sagrada Família wouldn’t be completed until 2030 due to delays related to Covid. Most Covid restrictions were lifted by early 2022 after two years, yet an extra four years were tacked onto the predicted completion, it kind of seems like this building might never be finished. One thing that is a little sad though is that people in some of the surrounding houses and apartments will lose their legally purchased homes for the expansion of the church grounds, homes they pay taxes on to make way for a taxpayer funded building that will generate an income, but never pay tax, and these people were showing their displeasure in several ways, but mainly with banners hung from their balconies.
A look at the exterior of Sagrada Família, but if you want to see the interior shots, just check my previous Barcelona post:
The rest of the day was spent strolling around, shopping and a few drinks before dinner and then calling it a night, because Anna definitely needed to attend the conference the next day.
Friday, September 20, 2024
I would be left to my own devices today, just exploring the city, shopping, and eating, all good options here, plus I kept an eye out for dessert places that Anna might like to try, so that’s how I spent the bulk the day until Anna was free and then it was time for some post-conference drinks with her and some other old friends.
Take a look around this area of Barcelona (some of the photos are from the previous afternoon too) and join us for a rooftop beverage!:
Now, you might’ve noticed in the second-last photo I am wearing a tie. No, I didn’t have to make a court appearance for crimes the previous day, instead it was the night of the conference ball, on this occasion being held at the beautiful Llotja de Mar:
The Llotja de Barcelona or Llotja de Mar is a building located on Passeig d’Isabel II, in the La Ribera neighbourhood of Barcelona. The current 18th-century neoclassical building is considered one of the finest neoclassical building in Barcelona. Hidden within its walls, is the core of the original medieval llotja known as the saló de Contractacions, one of the finest civil gothic buildings in the Mediterranean. Originally conceived to provide merchants with a place for commercial transactions, it has also been used as a wheat store, an entertainment space, as a weapon magazine, a military barracks and the seat of the Consulate of the Sea and the Royal Barcelona Board of Trade. Today it houses the Cambra de Comerç and the Reial Acadèmia Catalana de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi.
Once the standard smalltalk ends and the networking begins at these conferences there isn’t a whole lot for the significant others’, particularly after the dinner itself, but on this occasion I had the chance to check out this magnificent building so that’s what I proceeded to do while the others were all talking shop.
In much the same way as when we were in Mexico just a few months prior we had inadvertently arrived when there was a massive festival on, this time La Mercè:
La Mercè is the annual festival of the city of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain. It has been an official city holiday since 1871, when the local government first organized a program of special activities to observe the Roman Catholic feast day of Our Lady of Mercy (Catalan: La Mare de Déu de la Mercè). Although the actual feast day is September 24, the festivities begin a few days beforehand.
Some of the most important features of the festival were introduced in the year 1902, when parades included papier maché “giants” known as gegants i capgrossos and a popular dance from Empordà that was becoming popular throughout Catalonia: the Sardana.
Or in simpler terms:
Barcelona La Mercè lasts for around 5 days and is a festival held in honour of Mare de Deu de la Mercè, the Patron Saint of Barcelona.
The festival, which officially first took place in 1902, bids goodbye to the summer with a bang and welcomes in the cooler months of autumn.
At first we saw the illuminated crowds on the street but had no idea what was going on, we figured we just had to get past them and continue on our way to find a place for some post-conference drinks in the general direction of our hotel, but that was to prove more difficult than anticipated. Once we approached the road we were met with a long procession of paper-mâché demons and dragons holding sparklers and fireworks approaching us from up the street, followed by children playing drums with more demons backing them up. Fortunately for us, unlike the festival parade in Mexico, this one didn’t last for hours so we were soon able to continue our night.
A look around Llotja de Mar and a taste of La Mercè:
Saturday, September 21, 2024
Saturday was our final day in Barcelona before moving on to the next stop and Anna was with me at the beginning of the day so I took her to see some of the stuff I had found earlier, plus a park with a bandstand dedicated to a trans person who was murdered in 1991 and also a giant green pond guarded by dragons. On top of this we learnt that the word ‘taller’ translates in to ‘workshop’, but this didn’t matter in the slightest to Anna when she found one called Abelux Taller and insisted I get a photo with it.
After a fantastic seafood lunch Anna had to return to the conference for a few hours, but once it was over she came back with some Singapore friends, Surin, Farah, and Stanley, and we managed to navigate our way around more processions for the festival and found a place to close out a great couple of days in Spain’s capital:
Sunday, September 22, 2024
Anna’s work portion of the trip was over and now we were on to the first stop of the holiday leg of our time in Spain, San Sebastián, where we would spend the coming days with our friends, Andy and Hayley:
San Sebastián, officially known by the bilingual name Donostia / San Sebastián, is a city and municipality located in the Basque Autonomous Community, Spain. It lies on the coast of the Bay of Biscay, 20 km (12 miles) from the France–Spain border. The capital city of the province of Gipuzkoa, the municipality’s population is 188,102 as of 2021, with its metropolitan area reaching 436,500 in 2010. Locals call themselves donostiarra (singular), both in Spanish and Basque. It is also a part of Basque Eurocity Bayonne-San Sebastián.
I resisted buying ibérico ham from a vending machine in the airport and we touched down in San Sebastián at around 5:30 in the afternoon. This leg of was going to be a few days with no real plan besides a lot of eating, especially pinchos (also called ‘pintxos’ there), interspersed with drinking here and there, plus there was an international film festival on, apparently Johnny Depp and Cate Blanchett among others were in town for it so we would be trying to do some celebrity spotting. It was 7:00pm when we had checked into the hotel, walked down the stairs of varying heights to the street, and met up with Andy and Hayley so the four of us could begin winding through the narrow streets and alleyways looking for places to eat and that’s when we found those pinchos:
A typical snack of the Basque Country and Navarre, “pinchos” consist of small slices of bread upon which an ingredient or mixture of ingredients is placed and fastened with a toothpick, which gives the food its name “pincho,” meaning “spike.” Pinchos are usually eaten as an appetizer, accompanied by a small glass of young white wine or beer. Pinchos are very common in the taverns of the Basque
In this type of pinchos, the toothpick is used to keep ingredients from falling off the bread and track the number of items the customer has eaten. Sometimes, differently priced pinchos have toothpicks of different shapes or sizes.
Almost any ingredient can be put on the bread, but those most commonly found in the Basque Country include fish, stuffed peppers, and croquettes. Pinchos can be very sophisticated, sometimes consisting of very elaborate (and sometimes expensive) fish, seafood, or meats.
Pinchos are used as an excuse for socializing. Typically, a group of friends will go from one tavern to another, drinking small glasses of wine or beer and eating pinchos.
The final line of that description was exactly what we did and we also knew it would be a continuing occurrence while we were in San Sebastián. What we didn’t realise was that the small bars selling them tended to get so crowded that it was sometimes difficult to walk past all of the people in the street that were either waiting or just eating and drinking outside. One in particular, Bar Sport, seemed substantially busier than all of the others so that was a place we would definitely need to visit.
A lot of these small bars tend to close relatively early, especially on a rainy Sunday night, so we found a courtyard with multiple bars, but the Irish pub was the most crowded, had outdoor seating in the perfect weather, and wasn’t closing any time soon so that’s where we went, we just didn’t expect it to turn into the night it did; we ended up making a bunch of friends immediately, managing to save one of the girls from an American tourist in his late-50s who was almost certainly a sex pest after he asked her a string of questions that just got creepier the more he spoke. I also ended up having a strange run in with a group of Brits in the toilets after I said “Excuse me” as I tried to get past. They noticed I was Australian and asked whereabouts I was from so I answered Melbourne and almost immediately one asked in a far coarser manner if I’d ever had sexual relations with a Greek man. Straight after that another one asked if his friend could do similar with me, however, the friend in question was extremely short so when I jokingly replied that he might need a stool his friends mocked him mercilessly about his size for the rest of the night.
It turned into a later night than anticipated, but here’s our first impression of San Sebastián:
Monday, September 23, 2024
Anna and myself awoke thinking we had somehow found ourselves trapped behind yet another festival, however, we were relieved to discover that it was just a protest going by our hotel.
This is a beautiful, old seaside city so the plan was coffee and a few more pinchos before walking through the city in order explore the waterfront area. Hayley is a morning person so they were up before us, but we soon found the couple and headed toward the sea. She had already walked one side of the waterfront that morning too, but there are multiple paths up the hills behind the main boardwalk so they went one way while we went another before finding a restaurant, Igeldo, to settle into for lunch several hours later to recover from our hike.
After a fantastic meal and a few drinks Anna had realised that so far on this Spanish getaway she hadn’t had one of her favourite desserts, churros, yet so we stopped off for some on our way back to the city, closing out the night in another pinchos joint, just taking it easy.
Around the city and waterfront by day:
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Andy and Hayley were up bright and early again, but Anna and myself only had one thing on our collective minds; Bar Sport. We had now walked past this place two nights in a row only to find it packed inside and crowded outside so maybe the daytime was the right time to go. We were lucky when we got there, because it was reasonably quiet and we were able to pull up a seat inside. Anna had seen previously that there were sea urchin pinchos so that was the first priority, as well as some great anchovy and sausage ones among others that we ordered. It must’ve been some sort of freak occurrence, because just as we were finishing up the crowd arrived, filling both the bar and the street outside yet again.
We hadn’t really seen much of the city besides areas near our hotel and the beach so we spent the afternoon just wandering around, exploring the historic buildings around Plaza Gipuzkoa and the Centro district, crossing multiple bridges back and forth over the river, and finally looking around the lobby of the Cultural Centre until we needed to return to the hotel for a rest. When the other pair were ready we were out again, obviously stopping off for some aperitifs before yet another great dinner at Gerald’s Bar, strangely enough a sister restaurant to the place that used to be walking distance from my apartment back when we lived in Melbourne. Weirder still, they had a wine that shared my name, ‘Abel’ being a name we kept stumbling upon in Spain, so naturally they ordered it and Anna had to get a cheesy photo of me holding it up (I retained some dignity by wearing a GG Allin t-shirt while doing so) before we moved on to a bar near Biteri Plaza to close out the day.
Eating, exploring, and eating again:
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
It would be the final day in San Sebastián for all four of us so we needed to spend it eating well, a target easy to achieve when Hayley found out about a restaurant called Zelai Txiki and made a booking. Before we went we did some shopping, me finding a terrible Adidas blazer along the way and once we arrived at the restaurant we ate like royalty. This was mainly because, not only was the food fantastic, us feasting on roasted pigeon, cheese-baked crab, and of course more pinchos among other dishes, they also made their own in-house charcuterie so we were having some of the best jamon, ibérico ham, and pickles I’ve ever tasted.
See for yourself:
That afternoon we took a leisurely walk along the beach and Hayley on one of her previous walks had spotted a funicular similar to the one we took in Guanajuato, Mexico, this time taking us to a fort at the top of a hill. It was a cooler day than the past few so the beach wasn’t too busy, perfect conditions for a stroll by the sea to the hill. Once we had arrived we took the funiular up and looked around the fort and despite its appearance, I think some changes had been made over time, most notably the garden of comedic, giant mushrooms, resplendent with a small gnome taking a shit, as well as the haunted house amusement area, one that was closed that day, and the row of trampolines near the edge of a sharp descent, a great way of spending your time on top of a rather tall hill overlooking the ocean. As we wandered around the summit we also discovered it was the perfect location to take in a yacht fire. At first I had seen a little smoke coming out of the boat and just assumed it was a problem with the engine, but that soon became a fire, the flames billowing out, flames that kept getting larger and larger, as it took more than half an hour for a rescue crew to arrive.
The beach, the fort, and the yacht fire:
Andy and Hayley had an early flight back to Germany the following morning so they would also be having an early night, however, it wouldn’t be the last time I’d see them both on this trip. We had to close our final night in this town with even more pinchos before the pair returned to the hotel while Anna and myself walked around looking for somewhere to hang out after dinner. A lot of places here were closing early again, plus it was starting to rain, but we knew the Irish pub would meet our needs again so we pulled up a seat in the square and had a few drinks while laughing at a guy in front of us who looked quite like Matt Berry. Although it wasn’t really him. The extent of the celebrities we saw pretty much began with the guy from Emily in Paris and ended at Andrew Garfield, neither of whom I would ever recognise or had actually heard of.
Thursday, September 26, 2024
Now we were to commence the third leg of our Spanish holiday, Anna driving us both to Elciego to spend the night in a winery. Anna’s favourite car is the Fiat 500 and one of the newer models is what she initially hired, but fortunately the only one available when we went to collect it was a manual so Anna wouldn’t be able drive it and there was no way possible we would be able to fit all of our luggage in the car, let alone me, so we just had to make do with our more reasonably-sized ride. It would take a few hours to get there s0 we made a stop along the way, spending a drizzly hour or two in the small municipality of Vitoria-Gasteiz, navigating the streets and taking pointless travelators through the main medieval areas inside forts, seeing Virgen Blanca Square and Plaza Nueva. It was an absolute ghost town when arrived due to it being the siesta, absolutely nobody was out, but it eventually livened up so we then made multiple stops for food and shopping.
Some of the sights around Vitoria-Gasteiz:
We were soon back on the road to Elciego for our penultimate night in Spain at the Marqués de Riscal Vineyard Hotel, but it wasn’t smooth sailing navigating our way there, getting hopelessly lost multiple times in the pouring rain, having to make difficult corners, and rely on the patience of other drivers, but once again Anna nailed it in the car and we were soon checking in. The hotel is housed in an incredible building designed employing methods previously used in the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Even describing it as ‘incredible” seems like a massive understatement to be honest, although Anna had an idea of what to expect from when she was booking a room on the hotel’s website, because this is what we’d be in for:
This stunning 21st-century chateau was designed by internationally renowned architect Frank O. Gehry and is a true masterpiece. Located in The Marqués de Riscal City of Wine this 5-star hotel is truly an adventure of a lifetime. Prepare to savor a one-of-a-kind experience of all the senses at Hotel Marques de Riscal. New delights await. Enjoy local cuisine and fine wines at 1860 Tradicion or Marques de Riscal Restaurant, both overseen by Michelin-starred Chef Francis Paniego, or soak up the benefits of the grape at the Vinothérapie SPA Caudalie Marqués de Riscal. Welcome to the only hotel created by Frank O. Gehry where each of the unique 61 guestrooms and suites promises to enchant with exceptional designer touches and enviable views of the countryside, medieval town of Elciego or the striking architecture.
I’m not into wine at all, I’ll drink it if it’s offered to me as the only option, but it’s just not something I truly appreciate, however, even I was looking forward to staying at this place, because that description tells us we’d be eating well too.
We had a dinner booking for that night so we settled into our room, showered, then I donned my giraffe shirt and a blazer I had bought from a thrift store earlier in the week and I was right, dinner didn’t disappoint as you will see from my kind of blurry photo of the menu, rather than posting a photo of every dish. Once we were done we went to a bar in the hotel, but we were the only couple there and we needed to call a person from upstairs every time we wanted service so we only stuck around for a couple and decided to have an early night.
In and around the winery:
Friday, September 27, 2024
Our adventure around Barcelona and the Basque region of Spain was coming to a close, but we still had a lot to pack into that final day. We were staying at a winery so the item on the agenda immediately after lunch was a tour and tasting. This would be a small group tour, however, there were other groups that had begun their tours earlier so we would eventually catch up with them as well. Again, it’s not my area of expertise, but it was actually quite interesting and the buildings and scenery were stunning. We began in one of the vineyards, being taught about the soil and vines, pH levels, all the important stuff while an American tourist in our group constantly plucked off grapes to munch on while listening to the guide and it wouldn’t be the only time he would do something that the rest would consider “uncouth” on this tour. From the vineyard we were taken into an old building where the wine is initially fermented before being led down a steep, winding flight of stairs into several cellars where the barrels are aged, being fed a constant stream of information along the way that I have absolutely no way of remembering. From there it was to an area where vintage bottles of wine are stored before finally stepping out onto the factory floor to see grapes being crushed as well as bottles being filled and labeled. Now it was the time everyone was waiting for, the tasting, or as our grape-eating American cohort considered it, free flow! We were all given glasses and were poured a decent sized sample of three different wines. Some decided to savour their glass and detect the tasting notes, others such as Anna, who had to drive later and did so before spitting it into a bucket, and then there was that one particular man who would drink it and then go over to the table and keep topping himself up almost to the brim. Anna bought a couple of bottles to bring back to Singapore, as well as ring inspired by the main building at the conclusion of the tour.
A little of what we saw that rainy afternoon interspersed with some shots of Anna:
It was almost 5:00pm when we were done with the tour, then we needed to pack the car and head back to the San Sebastián region to our hotel near the airport. We knew the drill this time so we decided to make a different stop, one that many people know for a rather intimidating activity, Pamplona:
Pamplona, historically also known as Pampeluna in English, is the capital city of the Chartered Community of Navarre, in Spain.
The city is famous worldwide for the running of the bulls during the San Fermín festival, which is held annually from 6 July to 14 July. This festival was brought to literary renown with the 1926 publication of Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises.
Obviously we were a couple of months late to partake in being run down and gored by rampaging bovine, but as we were walking around the city, the horn marks from the bulls were quite obvious on buildings and other surfaces in some areas of the city. There were the obvious tourist traps selling absolutely anything with a bull on it, but there were also some really chill and relaxed parts of the town as well so we could unwind before hitting the road once more, this time driving into the night. We reached our medieval-looking hotel and checked in around 10:00pm, grabbed a late dinner and some final drinks on our last night in Spain.
Pamplona and dinner near the San Sebastián airport:
Our flights the following day were relatively late so we had a last serving of Pinchos and some seafood before Anna took her flight back to Singapore while I joined Andy and Hayley again in Germany so we could go to a Monster Magnet concert, but that’s for another time.
I’ve loved Spain each time I’ve been and although you always hear nice things about San Sebastián, it was even better than we possibly could’ve hoped for, I could happily spend a lot of time in that town!
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