There it is! All the way up there next to France!
We were excited because this was the first time that we were taking a weekend trip away which meant we had to figure out bus and somewhere to stay!
The first thing we had to do was get to Avenida de America. Daunting as I'm sure it is a large street! Does the bus just leave from the side of the road or what?! Luckily Espe is beyond fabulous and brought us into Madrid (a 20 minute ride). She dropped us off right where the station is! Yes, it's a full on station so we knew exactly where we would be leaving from :)
I love when I am so worried about figuring out all of the details and then things just work out and you learn how to do it for next time!
We got on our bus at about 7pm and we were due to arrive at 12:30am. Well, I learned that traffic works in the major cities just like it does at home. Everyone leaves them on Friday nights and everyone returns on Sunday nights. That ended up being the case on this Friday night. We hit traffic not even 30 minutes outside of the city. A few stops along the way put our arrival behind schedule. We had rented a room from airbnb.com which is a wonderful site to get a place to stay with people renting out rooms in their apartments. The girl who we were staying with expected us around 12:32 since it's a 2 minute walk from the bus stop. Well, that didn't happen. Luckily I have service with my Spanish cell phone. *the ALSA bus claims to have wifi, but it doesn't*. My phone battery was also dying and I had left the cords to recharge it with my portable charger thingie under the bus...rough. I kept my phone off and only turned it on to text her that we were going to be WAY late. Her name was Jenni and luckily she was SUPER nice to come get us when we got off the bus. It was around 1:30am and it was dark and misting and we just wanted to find the apartment. Super confusing set up of the buildings...but once we found it we would never forget. Finally we found a bed and were awoken the next morning to the sound of little feet running above our heads..oh yea and screaming. The weather was predicted to be mostly cloudy or raining. We got a few clouds and only that misty rain on the first night we arrived. Other than that, we had great exploring weather! *not too hot, not too cold*.
Saturday didn't look like a beach day, so we took the opportunity to explore around San Sebastián.
We woke up around 11:30-completely normal don't worry! We set off to a day of adventuring.
My favorite street in San Sebastián!! The trees covered both sides of the road!
We meandered our way to the cathedral!! Nothing in comparison to the cathedral in Segovia, but hey it's cooler than anything we have in way of cathedrals in the US!
I mean seriously...look at the detail of this building! There was a wedding happening inside and they had the doors open so you could go in! In my opinion i would like my wedding to be private but hey, to each their own.
We found the beach!!! with nobody on it, but the sky was clearing up!
We still had to try the water! It was pretty chilly, but not too too bad!
We started walking around the Old City which basically consists of tiny shops and bars packed full!
Found another beautiful church in Old Town!!
We had heard that the aquarium was a must see! Because of all the hype I paid 13euros to get in! Luckily Darah had her student ID and got student discount and only paid 9euros! I knew I should have brought my ID! So we spend the next 2 hours wandering around the aquarium that was right on the water!
starfish
touch tank: only had fish (not so great for a touch tank because they swim away as soon as you put your hand in the water!
SHARK!
It swam right above us!!
360 degrees....sorta
weird thing that I forget the name of
sand eels! creepiest thing we saw all day.
Of course there were lots of tiny spaces for kids (or Darah) to crawl into.
When we were done looking at all of the weird sea life we came outside and the blue skies were coming!! It was clearing up.
We decided to hike to the top of Monte Urgull! It didn't take us that long, and we went the long way winding back and forth to make it to the top. I was sweating but I'm pretty sure Darah wasn't phased. Took us about 30 minutes?
On the way up we saw this sweet view!
and here is the progression of Darah doing a handstand. I thought it was necessary to see the whole group of them.
hahah yes! She said that it would be cool to do some handstands, so now I make her do them wherever I want :)
a nice garden we found on the way up
and then the view from the top!!
yayyy! see the sun shining through!
There we are. 1 sweaty and 1 perfectly in shape!
After walking around all day (we hit 26,000 steps!) we were pretty tired! We went back to the room to take a small siesta and then we headed out to walk around a little bit more and watch the Holland/Brazil game. We found a pub along the way that said 1euro for all the pinchos you can eat. (Pinchos are like small appetizer like foods that they place along the bar and you can eat them with your drink). We were SUPER stuffed from dinner, so we just tried one! Oh, and that bar was completely empty! A total of 6 people in there. Had some pretty embarrassing communication with the bartender as well.
Good times.
And that's it for this post. Sunday will just have to be on a separate one! I feel bad even making you read it for this long! Congrats to those of you who made it to the end :)
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