Monthly Archives: August 2015

Since our beach day in San Sebastian was rained out, we decided to spend a day at the beach our first day in Barcelona.  After traveling a little farther out of the center of the city we found just what we were looking for: a nice quiet, not-so-crowded, beach where we could rent towels for the day, and enjoy the sunshine with a nice breeze.  The beach and water were beautiful.

As we toured Italy and Spain there is one thing Lindsey wanted to do that we just could not fit into our schedule: take a cooking class.  As we passed several cooking schools, Lindsey just wanted to stay and join the class.  I would not be surprised to see Lindsey return to Europe at some point in the future for some culinary training.

Luis Irizar Cooking School in San Sebastian Spain

San Sebastian, Spain Cooking School

Cooking School in Florence, Italy

We will let you go Lindsey as long as you promise to cook for us when you return!

San Sebastian (Donostia in Basque) is a coastal town in northern Spain with a long, beautiful beach.  Our plan was to have a quiet, relaxing day on the beach.  Unfortunately, light rain filled our day.  We made the most of our visit after a brief search for four small travel umbrellas.

Due to the rain, we cut our visit short, jumped on a bus, and headed back to the Bilbao airport for our evening flight to Barcelona.

Our new umbrellas

Kelsey visited the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain during her trip as an exchange student in 2013.  Unfortunately, she did not get to see as much of the museum as she would have liked, so we decided to incorporate a visit to the Northern shore of Spain into our trip.  We looked forward to also having some cooler weather.

Inside the Bilbao train station.

After 5 hours on the train, we reached Bilbao and spent the afternoon at the Guggenheim Museum.  The architecture for this building is amazing.  The modern art inside the museum was not really our taste, but it was a neat experience.

From Bilbao we took a bus an hour east to spend the night in San Sebastian, a beautiful coastal city with a wonderful beach and a neat place to celebrate Lindsey’s birthday.

Evening in San Sebastian.

After saying good-bye to our Madrid friends, we spent one more day seeing some more sights in the city.  We explored the Palacio Real de Madrid (the Royal Palace), the Mercado de San Miguel (a historical central market) and the Parque de Madrid (a large, beautiful central park with a pond and rowboats you can rent).  It was a wonderful place to sit in the shade and enjoy a breeze on such a hot day, the hottest of our trip at 39 degrees Celsius (102.2 degrees Fahrenheit).

To cap off our last night we took in some flamenco dancing and one last serving of churros con chocolate at Valor Chocolates, serving chocolate since 1881.

One more serving of churros con chocolate