San Sebastian.

The train ride through the French countryside was beautiful...and, admittedly, I dozed through much of it.  After a few days of go, go, go, my jet lag and lack of sleep was beginning to catch up with me.  I love train rides, though, and this one was no exception.  If I could take a train every day, I totally would--there's nothing quite like hopping on a train, reading, walking around, watching the countryside go by, and arriving at your destination without feeling cramped up and exhausted is the best!

We arrived in a tiny little town on the French/Spanish border and had to change trains.  We had a ticket for a train to San Sebastian, but it wasn't going to leave for another 45 minutes or so.  One of the locals took pity on the silly Americans and pointed us out the door and across the street--where commuter trains (like a subway/metro) leave every three minutes for the same destination and cost 1 Euro 50.

As we were riding the train, Ben looked out the window and brought to my attention the name of the stop: Loiola.  WHAT????  After searching for hours and hours to find it, did we really just stumble across it?  This unexpected discovery definitely renewed our excitement to try and find it!

We got off the train in the center of San Sebastian--what an adorable little town!  We headed off in the direction of the hostel we were trying for and totally lucked out with an available room.  The woman who ran the hotel was ADORABLE--and didn't speak a word of English.  She also barely spoke any Spanish--and let me tell you, the Basque language is NOTHING like English OR Spanish!  It's CRAZY!!  Despite these difficulties, we manage to extract from her, through our broken language skills, that Loyola was an hour away by bus, and the bus cost about 3 Euros--PERFECT!!  She even called the bus station for us on her cell phone and wrote down the times of the busses for us--she was AWESOME!!  To further her esteem in our eyes, she also gave us a map with directions, not only to the bus stop, but also to a place we could go find some genuine Basque cuisine, which is NOT to be missed.

We got to this little restaurant around 9:00/9:30 PM, and if you thought the dinner hour in France was late--let's just say shortly before we FINISHED our dinner, one other group came in to eat.  Yep--we were WAAAAAY early, but it worked to our advantage--our waiter was a total gem.  We had NO idea what anything was, but between the three of us (Ben, the waiter, and me), we managed to select some dishes for us to try.  And even though they were largely things I'd never eaten before, they were beautiful and DELICIOUS.  Octopus salad, anyone?

After dinner we wandered around the coastline on the edge of the city, near enough the Atlantic to feel the spray as the waves hit the rocks.  It was magical.  The city lights were beautiful and the boardwalk was well-lit, so we had a great time exploring.  

After wandering around the boardwalk and the marina, checking out the awesome fishing nets and the crazy Basque signs, we headed back to the hotel.  Ben had just started dating a new girl back home, so between her and trying to figure out his accomodations for the rest of his time in Spain (he was going to work on an organic farm) he was dying to use the internet for awhile.  I sent Erik and my family a couple quick e-mails and headed to bed.

The next morning we got up early and headed out to find the bus station.  Ben was in a foul mood, as he had discovered the night before that the farm he was supposed to stay at for the next few weeks had backed out of the deal (or so he thought...the e-mail was the first he had received from them in Spanish, and he doesn't really speak/read Spanish).  I tried to just go with it and be empathetic as we headed out on our next adventure.

We got to the bus stop, only to find we had just missed our bus--literally by one minute.  The next bus wouldn't come for over an hour, so we needed to spend some time figuring out how to get a ticket.  Sometimes you buy tickets from a ticket window, sometimes from a kiosk, sometimes from the driver--it's hard to say which way to get your ticket unless you've actually been on the bus or you can ask someone who has, so we were in a bit of a pickle.  

And THEN something great happened (my Utah friends will LOVE this)--I looked over and saw four young men in suits and ties with little nametags--being from Utah, I can spot a Mormon missionary a mile away!!  And I was pretty certain AT LEAST one of them would speak English (especially when I saw one's nametag said "Elder Strickland").  As luck would have it, I was right!!  They did speak English!!  And they were more than happy to speak a little English with us and explain how the busses worked in San Sebastian.  (I told them I grew up in Utah, and sure enough, Elder Strickland was from South Jordan.  Small world.)  We thanked them and headed out to find some breakfast.

We stopped by a little market and bought some bread and cheese and fruit, then we made my favorite discovery of the trip--they had these AMAZING, huge jars of fruit juice (all different flavors--I LOVE JUICE!!) that were SUPER cheap and DELICIOUS.  I got pear juice the first time and peach juice later in Barcelona--soooooooo good!!  :)  I drank that pear juice ALL day.  :)  (It was basically pureed pears with a little bit of lemon juice and water--YUM!!  And all natural, no sugar added.)

Ben tried calling the farm he was supposed to work at, to no avail, and I went back and napped in the sun for a little bit before our bus came.  Luckily some guy told us our bus would actually come to a different spot than we thought, or we would have missed it again!!  The bus driver was SUPER nice, putting up with our minimal Spanish and lack of Basque language skills, and told us he would make sure we knew when it was our stop, and told us it would take one hour.  Awesome.

We climbed to the upper level of the double decker bus and settled in up front to enjoy our journey through the Basque country.