Time to leave Bilbao and head on to San Sebastián. Bilbao has been a real highlight – would very much recommend you visit.

We had breakfast, packed up and went out to get one last coffee. Our usual place wasn’t quite open yet so we went to Cafe Originale instead.

On the road again we decided to drive the coastal route and stop in a town called Lekeitio for lunch. We had no idea what we would find in this town – it was just a good distance to break up the trip.

We drive through a bunch more mountains with swirly roads and tunnels and more. Very beautiful.

As we approached the town of Lekeitio we saw the thing we fear the most…people walking from long distances carrying bags and beach chairs….

We drove in to the town and it looked really cute AND BUSY! There was a huge beach and lots of people everywhere. But we needed to stop and have lunch because we were starving. We kept driving but saw no parking spots. We started driving up the mountain again – and once you start driving up a mountain there is no return. Eventually we did find a turn out, and turned around and we managed to find a parking spot way up the other side of town. It was a bit of a hike into town, but we were keen to check it out.

We brought out mini croissants with us for snacking which we had on a bench overlooking the water.

There were lots of restaurants and cafes around and as we walked along looking at them all – the stand out dish seemed to be the fried calamari. We found a place that had spare chairs and sat down and wondered how to order. There were no menus inside or outside. The kid that came to take our order spoke only Basque. We pointed at someone else’s calamari and asked for “dos agua con gas”. We got 1 Agua con gas and the calamari, but I managed to order another second Agua in the end. The calamari was crispy and tender.

Another wander around the town post lunch. Very cute little place.

It was about 4pm by now so we thought we better get a move on and head towards San Sebastián.

When we got in to San Sebastian it was around 6pm on a Saturday night. We couldn’t figure out how to get in to our accommodation for a while and when we did, it smelt a little *too* much from bleach for our liking. We opened all the windows as much as possible and thought “omg have we made a terrible mistake?” I went to find a supermarket for breakfast supplies but the pickings were slim, and the streets and area around our accommodation were heaving with people – and for some reason thousands of 15 year old-ish teenagers. There’s a McDonalds nearby and it literally had a line of maybe 500m or more out the door. WTF is going on? Is this what happens in San Sebastian? Is it going to be Leon all over again? Do we just want to go back to Bilbao?

We needed dinner by this stage, and Old Town is were most of the pinxtos bars are, and again it was insanely busy….its always a bit disorienting arriving in a new city. So we just chose a random place to go into – there was a table free so we took it. I was determined not to eat bread for tonight’s dinner so after some initial confusion on how to order, we got the Patatas Bravas and some scallops.

Then the waiter brings us oysters – no no we didn’t order oysters, except our receipt says we did….they were kind enough to exchange it for us. I didn’t want oysters. I would’ve kept pretty much anything else on the menu other than the oysters.

Food was good despite our being slightly overwhelmed by all the madness.

We walked around a bit after dinner but it was so busy (and I was really tired) so we went back to our accommodation and attempted to get an early night. Unfortunately the party people of San Sebastian had other ideas….at about 2am in the morning I dug out my earplugs and regretted not booking the accommodation I nearly booked on the other side of town.

San Sebastian you are going to have to work hard to impress us…..