This is not Spain, This is not France, This is Basque

So I am finally sitting down to write this blog despite the piles of homework sitting in front of me, but why change my habits just because Im in Spain... procrastination is a lifestyle. So this weekend I went to a small city on the Northwest coast of Spain. It is very very close to France but it is in what is called Basque country.

Here is a bit of Spanish history for you... Spain has been occupied by a number of different cultures, religions, and peoples over its thousands of years. It was taken over by the Muslims (Los Moros) at one point and eventually Spain was ruled by a Castallano king. Castallano is the name for the language known today as Spanish, but it is by no means the only language spoken in this country. It is not even the oldest. Various provinces in Spain speak different dialects or different languages all-together. The Basque Country is one of those areas that speaks a language totally different from Castilian Spanish. It is called Basque and is NOTHING like Spanish. These people have excessive pride in their home and are currently looking to become their own nation. It is a topic of much controversy here in Spain and while in San Sebastian we witnessed some nationalism that those people should really be proud of.

We stayed in the Parte Vieja, which is the old part of the city. It is beautiful. We were told that one of the churches here has the only black madonna inside. We never ended up seeing that, but it is an interesting fact. We spent our days at the beach, walking around the city taking pictures, a bit of shopping (some of this is some serious high end stuff, which we avoided accordingly), hiking, and plenty of eating.

This was the most beautiful place I have ever seen in my entire life. The water was aqua blue (not quite as blue as Hawaii, I will admit) and the sand was clean and soft. We hiked up this small mountain type hill which has a huge statue of Jesus on top and we watched the sunset over the inlet. It was breathtaking. We also experienced a bit of typical Basque food and drink. In most of Spain, many people go out at night for dinner around ten and they have Tapas. In Basque Country, they have what are called Pintxos. This is a Basque word pronounced peen-ch-o's. (The Tx is a ch sound... so on the little train thing in the square, instead of saying choo choo it said txu txu.) They are single finger sandwiches or tapas type food and are AMAZING. I honestly have no idea what is in them, I just picked them and ate them. You walk into these Pintxos bars that are so crowded you can barely stand and the food is all on plates on the counter. You take a plate, and pick one of whatever you want (they are really small) and you just kind of eat standing there and pay and leave. They are like 1.5 euro each. We also drank a lot of wine, which was really cheap. We tried a wine from the Basque Country. I experienced tuna with bones and squid, not fried, but cooked in its own ink. Both were amazing. I also tried two drinks typical of Basque country, one was a cider, or Sidre. It is poured really high from a bottle and I dont know how to describe the taste (it tastes nothing like apple). I also tried another drink which is red wine and coke. It sounds gross but its awesome and completely worth trying.

So all in all, the trip was amazing and I think I understand why the most expensive reality in Spain is along these beaches. I would live there in a heartbeat.