I am sitting at the bar next door to our adorable hotel on the surfer beach of San Sebastian, Spain, and listening to Lullaby by the Cure. Thank goodness for that.

We are exhausted. The rushing is over, and we have exceeded expectations for distances across France, which is how we managed to get to San Sebastian after all, to enjoy lots and lots of pintxos and vino tinto.

This bar is called Scanners, and has a nice decor, a cool clientele, and a pool table. And the past 4 songs have all been the Cure. 😀 Make that 5. Make that 6. Now they’ve switched from Cure to Joy Division. Yes, we’re in the right bar.

We got into town around 4pm, after a lovely day (no rain!) racing south through the last bit of France.

Crossing the border, my first chance to speak Spanish was at the first toll booth, also the first manned one.

What a relief, after France, where I make an idiot of myself but at least people are kind about it, to actually speak the language. I was nervous at first, but it is easier and easier, and I’m better at it than the French tourists! This is very gratifying. On the advice of the lovely young woman at the hotel, we went to a good pintxos place in the Old Town, walked around the beaches, and saw some nice buildings and parks.

At the end, we thought: hmmm, those bars next to the hotel looked good. Let’s go back there and see if they have anything to munch on as well (yes, bocadillos). So here we are. And here are all the pics from today, your reward for reading!

The view from our hotel room:

That was Matt contemplating the Matt playground of squared stones.

Actually, an accidental selfie. So I hit the button.

The first time we walked past this mural there were bajillions of kids playing on the playground, so I didn’t get a picture.

If we painted those stones on the left, we could make a series of climbing adventures for Matt and his buddies.

Matt understood a few words of Spanish! He had jokingly “translated” what he thought he’d read, then looked up at the top and saw his translation was correct. 😀 So proud.

Weird trees on the beach. Look how destroyed they are… and yet they live!

I got my feet wet for the first time at Playa de la Concha.

This is the “no more rain! palm trees!” pose.

Our first pintxos!

And finally, a tale of the morning:
We packed up the bikes this morning, and they started just fine. But when I put mine in gear, it died. Strange. I tried a few more times. Same. I called Matt over. We tried out the kickstand. Interesting discovery: when I put the kickstand UP, it died, but ran just fine with kickstand down. Not ok. We had a look (our first) at the kickstand mechanism. I was very afraid of an electrical problem. But then I saw that the little nipple thing looked a little funky. Matt looked at his. Yes, mine was definitely funky. We played it in and out a bit. Matt said it definitely wasn’t moving smoothly. I said, “thank goodness! This isn’t an electrical problem; it’s mechanical! I’ve got WD-40!” And so, the final picture for today was really how it all began: