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Last holiday we've spent a couple of days in the north-west of Spain in the Basque region near San Sebastián. The Basques themselves don't call their city San Sebastián by the way. They speak Spanish, but also their own Basque language. It was just after a few days that I discovered that Donostia was the same as San Sebastián, but then in Basque 😂
San Sebastián is the second largest city in the Basque Country, after Bilbao with over 188.000 inhabitants.
A culinary city
San Sebastián is well known as a culinary city. It has the highest concentration of Michelin-starred restaurants per capita of any city in the world. The city is particularly famous for its pintxos. Pintxos are a sort of tapas; small snacks on a skewer. Because its location near the coast, a lot of the pintxos contain fish or other seafood.
Since I don't like fish at all I haven't tried any of them. And I also didn't visit one of the Michelin start restaurants either.
But if you do like fish or fancy restaurants; San Sebastián is the place to go.
The following image is the only one in this blog that I didn't make myself by the way. All other photo's are! This one is from Pixabay.
The Beaches
San Sebastián has three beaches; La Concha, Ondaretta and Zurriola. The three beaches are all beautiful and attract different kind of people.
La Concha is the beach in the middle. It's located directly on the city center and you see a lot of tourists here. The Ondaretta beach is located more southways and is the beach where most locals go. The third beach is Zurriola. Where the other two beaches are in a bay, Zurriola beach is more open which makes that the waves are much bigger there. Half of the beach is reserved for surfers. The other half is for swimmers that like a thrill of some nice waves (like us 😃).
La Concha
A green city
One of the things that stood out to me about San Sebastián was that it is such a green city. There are a lot of trees in the city center and also a lot of flowers in plant pots that brighten up the street scene.
Although that it was over 30 degrees celcius when we were there, the trees provided quite some shade and really help keeping the city a bit cooler. Cities with less trees really feel much hotter in summer.
Hop-on-hop-off
Because San Sebastián is quite a stretched city we decided to take a hop-on-hop-off bus to take us to the different highlights of the city. I used to think these tourist busses were stupid, but it's actually ideal to discover a city.
During the roundtrip we've seen quite some nice highlights like the cable car to the amusement park Monte Igueldo and Monte Urgull with the statue of Jesus on top.
Monte Urgull
City Hall
San Sebastián has a lot of nice buildings. Near the beach you have San Sebastián City Hall. It was built in 1887 and served as a casino until 1924. After that it became the city hall and it's a very nice landmark in the city.
San Sebastián City Hall
Good Shepherd Cathedral of San Sebastián
In the center of the old town you can find the Cathedral of San Sebastián.
This neo-gothic style cathedral was completed in 1897 after 10 years of building. It was designed by architect Manuel de Echave.
The cathedral has a tall spire that is 75 meters tall, making it one of the tallest buildings in the city.
Good Shepherd Cathedral of San Sebastián
Good Shepherd Cathedral of San Sebastián
I always want to go into churches and cathedrals when I visit a city.
I like the peacefulness, lighting and the smell of incense. Actually I like the whole atmosphere.
I also like the colorful stained glass windows. Some churches have a gloomy interior, but this one was quite vibrant with the giant stained glass windows.
The sun through the stained glass windows created a nice pattern on the floor of the cathedral.
Urumea River
The Urumea river runs through San Sebastián and splits the city in two. The river starts in the Basque mountains and is approximately 27 kilometers long. There are few bridges over the river. The nicest bridge is the María Cristina bridge that is decorated with four large white and richly decorated buildings. I don't know what their function is, but they look very nice.
I hope you enjoyed my blog about San Sebastián!
FriendlyMoose
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