Throwback Thursday: April 26, 2018 – San Sebastian, Spain

As I mentioned last week, each Thursday on my Instagram profile I’m posting a photo from where I was exactly six years ago when I was on my first backpacking trip across Europe. After publishing that post I thought it would be good to publish the same photos on this website, so from now through mid-July each Thursday will be Throwback Thursday. As a little bonus for people who come to this website, I’ll go into a bit more detail about each photo in these posts than I do with the ones I publish on Instagram.

Six years ago today I was in San Sebastian, aka Donostia, one of my favorite cities in all of Spain. San Sebastian is the sort of place you go to in order to take a vacation from your vacation. There aren’t a lot of touristy things to do there, so instead you just lie down on the city’s magnificent beach and let the sound of the waves slowly recharge your spirit. At either end of the bay are two green hills; the one at the east end overlooks San Sebastian’s old city and has a Jesus statue at the top, giving the city almost a mini-Rio de Janeiro feel, while the one at west end has a small amusement park on top of it. This photo was taken on a tower up on that western hill amusement park. The lady who operated the ticket stand to the tower had a small dog named Miru and I remember that both of them were still there when I returned to San Sebastian in 2015. Since I didn’t have my cell phone with me on the trip, I had to take selfies with my little point-and-shoot Canon camera, and this photo took multiple attempts to get right. Behind me on the right you can see part of San Sebastian’s famed beachfront and behind me on the left is the hill overlooking the old city. It had been raining hard that morning but around 10:00am the rain stopped and by the late afternoon when I had gotten up the tower the clouds were finally starting to leave. San Sebastian isn’t linked to Spain’s high-speed rail lines, and thus takes about five to six hours to reach from either Madrid or Barcelona, but it’s worth the extra effort to get there and whenever I next go to Spain it’s just about a sure thing that I’ll pay the city a visit.

Man, I look really young in that photo.