San Sebastian is a coastal city located in Spain, just 20 km away from the French border. We loved the city as it felt relaxing when we were there. Not to mention that the Tapas were great!
When you are in the city of San Sebastian, be prepared to ditch your car in a car park and walk, even though the parking charges were not cheap. Depending on how long you parked your car, the charges is around 2 Euros per hour.
We booked our accommodation at Enjoy Comfort, which is around 5 minutes walk to the smaller Zurriola Beach.
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| Zurriola Beach |
To get to the main San Sebastian area, we crossed the bridge near the Kursaal (an auditorium and exhibition hall), which took us around 15 minutes of slow walking. I think Enjoy Comfort has negotiated for a good price with the car park nearby. We paid 12 Euros for 24 hours of parking.
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| Kursaal in the day |
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| Kursaal at night |
The host of Enjoy Comfort was very friendly and helpful. He recommended many many nice Tapas and restaurants for us. With only 2 days in San Sebastian, we were unable to try all the food he recommended. We tried a few though, and they were really good. I'll recommend them in this post later on.
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| Enjoy Comfort |
Below are the few places that I would definitely recommend visitors to visit if you are in San Sebastian.
La Concha (Kontxa) Beach
When we were researching online, we saw the beach name as La Concha Beach, but when we reached San Sebastian, some of the road signs actually named it as La Kontxa. So do take note of the different spelling.
The Beach has a nice curve and it felt really good walking on the fine sand, feeling the sea breeze and listening to the sound of the waves. It took us around half an hour to walk from one end of the beach to the other end, slowly.
Mount Urgull and the scenic walk along the coastline
After crossing the bridge next to Kursaal, we took a scenic walk on the pavement on Nuevo Ibilbidea along the coast line.
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| We saw several such whirlpools while walking on the pavement along the coast. |
After slow walking for half an hour on the pavement along the coast, we came to the entrance to climb up Mount Urgull. You can drive to the entrance if you have a car, there's a car park there.
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| Beginning of the climb |
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| At the first stop of Mount Urgull |
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| Further climb bring you to this La Mota Castle, at the top of Mount Urgull |
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| You can see this statue at the tip of Mount Urgull from far |
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| View of the Bay of Concha, Concha Beach and the town area of San Sebastian |
San Sebastian Old Town
This is the place where all the bars, restaurants and yummy Tapas or Pintxos (that's what the locals called Tapas) are located! At night, groups of people gather outside the bars in San Sebastian Old Town. It's so lively and crowded!
I'm now going to recommend 2 nice Tapas shops which were filled with people when we went. Are you ready to drool?
Bar Goiz Argi
Add: Calle Fermin Calbeton 4, 20003 San Sebastian - Donostia, Spain
Opening hours:
Wed to Sun: 6.30pm to 11.30pm
Wed to Mon: 9.30am to 3.30pm
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| Look at how packed it was in the bar! |
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| Gambas de bruschetta (prawns skewer with bread), Tartaleta de hongos (mushrooms tarts), and yummy beer with lemon cider mix. The prawns and the mushrooms were so tasty! |
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| Tartaleta de Txangurro (Crab tarts). The crab mixture tasted like crab bisque, but with lots of ingredients and little soup. Spread the crab mixture on the bread and eat it. They go so well with each other. |
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| Caldo de Pescado (Fish Soup). It like a bowl of very fresh and flavourful fish bisque! Thumbs up! |
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| There were many ready made Tapas displayed on the counter top for customers to order. But we were told that the yummy Tapas are the hot and freshly made ones, so we didn't take those on the counter. lol |
La Cuchara de San Telmo
Add: Calle 31 de Agosto 28 / Corredor de San Telmo, San Sebastian - Donostia, Spain
Opening hours:
Wed to Sun: 12.30pm to 3.30pm & 7.30pm to 11pm
Tue: 7.30pm to 11pm
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| Look at the number of people in the tiny shop! |
We were told that the chef of this Tapas was formally a student of a Michelin star chef. It's a must try when you are in San Sebastian because they serve posh restaurants standard food at Tapas price!!!
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| Sirloin steak grilled to perfection with black peppers. |
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| OMG! Foie Gras!! Can you believe the price? A half palm-sized piece of super yummy, melt in your mouth Foie Gras for only 3.90 Euros!!! I love this!! |
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| Veal cheeks. The meat literally melt in your mouth. It's so so GOOD!! Again, for only 3.40 Euros!! |
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| Lovely cod confit, the meat was so soft. Crispy suckling pig, it's so crispy that it has the 'crackling' sound when you bite it! And Risotto with goat cheese, err.. we were not used to the taste of goat cheese so no comments on that. |
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| Beer with lemon cider. This became our favourite drink! We even made it at home now! Just buy a bottle of lemon cider, mixed 50% of beer and 50% of lemon cider and you get the refreshing drink! |
Other than food, there will always be an iconic church monument in the old town of European cities, San Sebastian is no exception, the church of Santa Maria in the old town.
Mount Igueldo
Mount Igueldo is at the other end of La Concha beach. You could walk all the way to the other end of the La Concha Beach and then take the Funiculare up, which costs 3.10 Euros per person.
We were quite lazy to walk, so we drove directly up to Mount Igueldo. When we were nearing the top, we're required to pay a fee of 2.50 euros per person
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| View from Mount Igueldo, overlooking Mount Urgull, Santa Clara Island and the Bay of Concha. |
There's a small amusement park on Mount Igueldo with rides such as a not-so-scary roller coaster (but you can have great views while on the roller coaster), bumper car, trampoline, bumper boat etc. Do note that fees are applicable to take these rides.
Shopping in San Sebastian
If you wanted to do some shopping in San Sebastian, there're shopping area too. Walk out of the old town and you will find shops such as Zara, Desigual and some shopping centre.
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| Along the shopping street, there's a attractive monument standing tall, that's the Good Shepherd Cathedral of San Sebastian. |
These are the places I would recommend for San Sebastian. Of course, there're many water activities that you can do in summer!
Adios!
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