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San Sebastian, Bilbao and Bakio

Klaus Jones
September 9th, 2009 at 12:06 am

This place was everything we expected, and more. Australians were (as usual) bloody everywhere, but we managed to – for the most part – avoid them and party with the other tourists.

Our hostel had an interesting deal with the pub across the street, being that for every beer you bought, you got a free shot. Definitely made it easy to get a good buzz going.
Unfortunately, it appears that it pushed our roomates over the edge, and the one sleeping in the bunk above Steve felt the urge to vomit spectacularly off the edge of the bunk….all over poor Steve. Once the management kicked them out however, we scored some pretty chill roomates which made the remaining stay much more enjoyable.
San Sebastian sits on the north coast of Spain, and as such is close to Bilbao, Bakio and Zarautz – the latter two being fairly famous surf locations. Bilbao of course is home to the Guggenheim, an architectural masterpiece. Now, normally I’d never really go out of my way to see this. Thankfully, my architect friend Mr Young had the urge to go, so I tagged along.
I had the time of my life.
Never have I enjoyed a museum more than the Guggenheim. From the crazy structure of the Guggenheim itself to the layout of the exhibition rooms to the exhibitions themselves! All of it intrigued and held my attention for a good 3 hours, a feat indeed for something that can be described as Art.
The major exhibition being displayed was the work of one Cai Guo-Qiang, a Chinese gunpowder and explosions specialist. The other works were a recreation of a car crash and a collection of fluid shapes formed out of 20mm think steel and 8 meters high. One of the first places where I enjoyed pretty much every exhibition.
After our Arty stint we took a bus to Bakio, surf capital of Europe. Unfortunately, the surf was atrocious. Staggeringly bad. Still, we jumped in and spent a couple of hours cooling off before heading back to San Sebastian and a topping off the day with a 5 Euro all you can drink sangria evening.
The following days continued in the same vein, surfing (locally in San Sebastian) with some light revelry in the evening.
The exception to this was our last night, which got rather….big. Mr Merrett passed out in the toilets at our hostel, locking himself in on the 3rd story. Mr Young started hard and finished harder, falling comatose after abusing the dance floor, dress code, wall and toilet bowl – not necessarily in that order.
I, on the other hand, spent the entire night going hard at various pubs and clubs (and at one point the beach), powering through the night to chivvy my travelling companions awake at 6am. Our bus to Barcelona was a 7am connection, and I lead the way drunkenly on our mad dash to get there on time. Once we made it however, I literally passed out on the floor of the bus, spending the next several hours in peaceful oblivion.

This place was everything we expected, and more. Australians were (as usual) bloody everywhere, but we managed to – for the most part – avoid them and party with the other tourists.

Our hostel had an interesting deal with the pub across the street, being that for every beer you bought, you got a free shot. Definitely made it easy to get a good buzz going.

Unfortunately, it appears that it pushed our roomates over the edge, and the one sleeping in the bunk above Steve felt the urge to vomit spectacularly off the edge of the bunk….all over poor Steve. Once the management kicked them out however, we scored some pretty chill roomates which made the remaining stay much more enjoyable.

San Sebastian sits on the north coast of Spain, and as such is close to Bilbao, Bakio and Zarautz – the latter two being fairly famous surf locations. Bilbao of course is home to the Guggenheim, an architectural masterpiece. Now, normally I’d never really go out of my way to see this. Thankfully, my architect friend Mr Young had the urge to go, so I tagged along.

I had the time of my life.

Never have I enjoyed a museum more than the Guggenheim. From the crazy structure of the Guggenheim itself to the layout of the exhibition rooms to the exhibitions themselves! All of it intrigued and held my attention for a good 3 hours, a feat indeed for something that can be described as Art.

The major exhibition being displayed was the work of one Cai Guo-Qiang, a Chinese gunpowder and explosions specialist. The other works were a recreation of a car crash and a collection of fluid shapes formed out of 20mm think steel and 8 meters high. One of the first places where I enjoyed pretty much every exhibition.

After our Arty stint we took a bus to Bakio, surf capital of Europe. Unfortunately, the surf was atrocious. Staggeringly bad. Still, we jumped in and spent a couple of hours cooling off before heading back to San Sebastian and a topping off the day with a 5 Euro all you can drink sangria evening.

The following days continued in the same vein, surfing (locally in San Sebastian) with some light revelry in the evening.

The exception to this was our last night, which got rather….big. Mr Merrett passed out in the toilets at our hostel, locking himself in on the 3rd story. Mr Young started hard and finished harder, falling comatose after abusing the dance floor, dress code, wall and toilet bowl – not necessarily in that order.

I, on the other hand, spent the entire night going hard at various pubs and clubs (and at one point the beach), powering through the night to chivvy my travelling companions awake at 6am. Our bus to Barcelona was a 7am connection, and I lead the way drunkenly on our mad dash to get there on time. Once we made it however, I literally passed out on the floor of the bus, spending the next several hours in peaceful oblivion.

San Sebastian Pictures
Bilbao Pictures

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 12:06 am and is filed under Eurotrip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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