Today we were a bit unsure of our travel plans, because we knew we were going to Hendaye, but the diagram was showing two places, or two ways of getting to the same place. Anyway, we got to Hendaye, which is a town on the French side of the French Spanish border.
Once there, we had to find the local Euskotren station. This was the one to take us to San Sebastián. We had no idea where it was going to be be once we were off the first train, but we were happy with signs that led us in the right direction - one stress alleviated!
The train was there waiting and we'd recently been told not to jump on the first train you see, which was what we did. Well there was only one set of tracks, so it seemed right. We said San Sebastián to a local and he said "si". The ever lingering doubt once again started to take over, but luckily the conductor used some good body language (with her Spanish and the odd word in English) to explain how many stops!
Less than a minute later, San Sebastián's station name appeared on the screen. Bizarre timing. We really prefer the trains than have all their stations showing on the walls inside the train. These rolling tv type screens really don't help the overly worried tourists who don't speak the language.
Anyway, we got to San Sebastián. Phew! The saying of the day was "who would know?" We continually entertained ourselves with this when we had no clue, so quite often!
Next, out of the station and an attempt to find out place with no 3G and no paper map....yep dumb and quite under prepared for this section of the trip. We did take a snap shot of google maps around the direct area of the pension, but it was too zoomed in. We should have scrolled our google map a bit further out so we could still use it off line, as it would've been cached already....fools! Ya live ya learn!
Directly out of the train station there was literally a sign post pointing in the direction of the tourist information centre. Easy! Our place was just near there and we could see this area on our google map photo. OMG, walking out near the coastline on our way to the pension was breathtaking! Wow!
Unfortunately it was raining quite heavily today, so we really just checked in and then went looking for lunch and a local phone shop to get the skinny on the 3G situation! ....tears again! Nothing for prepaid! Thankfully Maccas was close...free wifi is their best quality!
We had tapas for lunch and really learnt from this experience. They add up quickly if you aren't careful. Grab from the plates on the bar and get things heated up if required and of course grab yourself a Sangria to top off the Spanish experience, that's what we did.
Later on we ate a great little restaurant and had a delish seafood paella, some stuffed peppers and a jug of Sangria. Yum! We only headed out to dinner at 10pm and the streets in old town were absolutely pumping! Even at the restaurant more people kept coming in for dinner after us.
We both seem to have colds and wicked coughs at the moment with the changing of the weather, so it was an early night.
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