Puente

Spain has a lot of holidays, whenever possible they manage to stretch the holiday over the weekend, they call this a puente which actually means bridge. Christopher and I took advantage of one of the longer puentes (4 days) by renting a car, we headed north to San Sebastian and Bilbao. The car ride was around 5 hours and the end of this ride runs through very large narrow mountains which tend to get a little foggy.

On a very late Friday night we arrived safely into San Sebastian. San Sebastian is a very popular tourist town known for the beaches and pintxos. On our first day in the city we were walking though the gotico part and happened to run into a rioja (specialty of the region) wine tasting festival, que suerte! We each bought a wine glass for 5 euros, this glass came with 5 tastings (each tasting happened to be a large glass full of wine) and a notebook for our critiques, we also got to keep the glass.

After the festival we toured some beautiful churches and the other parts of the city and then headed home for a siesta.

San Sebastian is well known for their pintxos a small tapa like food.  Of the top 50 restaurants in the world 4 of them are located in this area. Needless to say the area is heaven for all foodies.

When we weren't eating and drinking too much wine we haded over to Bilbao which is a 1 hour drive. This is the location of the famous Guggenheim museum. The museum was amazing and the exhibits were wonderful, although some were very strange but definitely worth the drive. We were lucky that we didn't get kicked out of the museum as Chris kept trying to take pictures of the artwork which is not allowed, more than once a  security guard had to come over and tell him to put his camera away.

Our little vacation ended with a hike to the top of a fortress and a 3.5 hour dinner Zuberoa, best meal of my life!

Beach view from our hike

Hiked to the top of the fortress

Festival de Rioja

Sculpture at Guggenheim

Guggenheim