Streams cross at the seaside

I started the day in Vitoria at 4 degrees rugged up in a puffy jacket, and yet by 5pm I was looking at people sunbathing at the beach in San Sebastian.

I’m a bit obsessed with San Sebastian’s history. Many of the things I have read refer to the “fire of 1813” which sounds like an event like the Great Fire of London. It was anything but. In 1813 the British army took San Sebastian from the French. What followed was three days of utter debauchery which left the population in tatters and culminated in the burning of the town by the rioting soldiers. The reports are harrowing even in the sanitised language of the time. At the end only 30 houses were left standing and the remnant population rebuilt from scratch. In turn, that explains the certain uniformity of architecture. The bit of this story that obsessed me is how thoroughly the British have scrubbed it out of their history.

Anyway, back to today when Jennifer and I reunited, mostly. We are both in San Sebastian and had a nice lunch in a plaza that used to be a bullring – that explains the numbers on the balconies in the photo. Lunch included trying the local txakoli wine – which is a light white with a little bit of fizz. I say a little bit of fizz, but it looks strange enough that when the waiter brought the glasses I had to check that they were meant to be like that.

We are in the same town, but we are staying in separate hotels as Jennifer has another night of meetings to deal with. So while she had a preparatory siesta I explored a bit in the growing heat. There is a definitely something subtly different about an Atlantic surf beach to the Pacific.

Jennifer and I met up again for pintxos in the evening – it was like going on a date. Then she went off to prepare for her meetings and I went in search of desert. Purely by chance I found a shop that makes nothing but Basque cheesecake. Heaven.