We had a bit of a slow start this morning after our late night last night. When we finally managed to get out of the hotel at about 11:30am, we ran in to the bass player and percussionist from Pulp! Eek! So we said hello and had a lovely chat with them. So that was nice. Told them to come to Australia but they basically said it was too far away. Sad.

Then we went back to our favourite coffee place.

We enjoyed our coffees in a different park this morning. Also, we had croissants.

The plan for today was to find the Old Town. It had proved difficult for us to find for some reason, but now I knew the local market was there and that’s where I was headed.

On the way to Old Town we passed by several pop up performances as part of the BBK Festival. We didn’t really stick around to watch them – but they were really loud and nobody seemed to mind. Like, one stage was right next to a marriage registry and people were getting married and having photos and we’re all done up in fancy duds meanwhile, there’s a death metal band screaming obscenities into a microphone at 100 decibels just nearby.

We found the market – and it’s a good one. The ground floor was food hall/restaurants etc and the top floor was fresh food. It all looked so good.

We couldn’t resist getting some pinxtos from the eating area.

Time for a coffee at Cafe Dupla. Nice coffee but the staff were a bit too hipster and didn’t appreciate my unique blend of English/Spanish/Basque. “Dos cafe leche con helio – yeh ice, ice in the coffee, we are sitting outside, no gracias I don’t need the receipt, Esskerrick Asko, Agur!”

Oh and we looked at some pinxtos bars in old town that were crazy busy and vowed to return at early dinner time.

Went for a wander along the river and behind the Guggenheim museum to see the giant spider. Failed to buy any football jerseys from the myriad of hawkers lining the streets.

Went back to the hotel for an arvo siesta. Steve had a bit of a wander around the neighbourhood and saw some things. I had a nap!

For dinner we went out on a pinxtos crawl. We started at the place we went to on our first night – La Oca because we enjoyed it so much.

We love the Gildas – they are the ones with the olives/anchovies/fefferoni. So good.

We had a couple more pinxtos here before we decided to try our luck again with the bars in old town.

We went to a place called Gure Toki – it was crazy busy. But I had it listed as a place I wanted to try. I’m not sure why – must’ve seen it on teh internetz somewhere.

We decided to hit up a third pinxtos place because that’s just what you do apparently. We went in to one place and I stood at the bar for a while whilst rude Germans pushed in front of me, before I decided to give up and move on. And so glad we did ! We found this awesome little place on the corner that was busy but not too busy and they were playing the best music – The Kinks, Jonathon Richman and even Pulp! We wanted to stay there all night. We got a couple more drinks and a couple more pinxtos and I do apologise at this point in time to all my vegetarian/vegan friends reading this…but we did try the Foie Gras. I’m not sure how I feel about Foie Gras as I know it is (usually) quite cruel to produce, but I have never had it before and I just wanted to see what all the fuss is about. And look, I do have to admit it was delicious. VERY rich and I don’t think I could eat much of it, but very tasty. Sorry poor gooses 😞

It was getting late by this stage so it was time to head back to the hotel. It was also raining quite heavily so we cleverly caught the subway back which took us almost exactly back to our hotel.