Bilbao and San Sebastian

To celebrate 30th birthdays we travelled to Bilbao and San Sebastian.  MacKenzie, Richard and I stayed in Bilbao the first night, then met Holly, Jeff and Jesse for the remainder of the week in San Sebastian.  We stayed in a great apartment a few minutes from the beach and had fun practicing our Spanish skills.

The highlight of Bilbao was visiting the Guggenheim museum.  In San Sebastian we hiked Mt. Urgull, drank sangria during sunset, visited a neighboring small fishing village called Hondarribia, and ate pintxos most nights.  San Sebastian is known for it's good food and night life, so most nights we would go "pintxos-hopping", eating small plates of food at four to six different bars where food is eaten by patrons at narrow bars while standing up.  Pintxos is the Basque version of tapas, which are often drank with small glasses of txakoli, Rioja wine or beer.  Txakoli is a regionally produced very dry white wine that's poured from high to make it slightly bubbly.  Our most common sentence we said in Spanish was most likely, "Seis txakoli, por favor!"

The other big highlight of the trip was when Jeff proposed to Holly on the beach during sunset.  It was such a great surprise and so special to witness.  Congrats Holly and Jeff!

Cathedral in Bilbao

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Our first pintxos and txakoli in Bilbao

Mack and Richard drinking Rioja outside of one of the pintxos bars

Jeff Koons "Tulips" at the Guggenheim in Bilbao

Jeff Koons "Puppy" made of flowers and soil

Guggenheim designed by Frank Gehry

Mack and Richard enjoying coffee and pintxos for lunch

The beach in San Sebastian with Mt. Urgull in the background

Spanish style lunch in our apartment

view from Mt. Urgull

Celebrating Mack's 30th birthday with sangria

On Playa de la Concha at sunset

Typical Basque lunch in Hondarribia.  For this lunch we had sangria, fried anchovies,
tortilla de bacalao, grilled shrimp, clams, squid in their ink and albondigas.

In the medieval walled section of Hondarribia

She says "YES!"

On the beach in San Sebastian

Going for a swim