Luckily it didn’t rain last night, despite the earlier thunderstorms. The sounds of leaves rustling woke us up quite a bit during the night. We packed up and I found my bike shorts that were drying over my bike covered in insects. It was a bit gross, but I brushed them off, we packed up camp, and set off by 8:15am.
It was a lovely bike ride along the river Adour to the fancy French town of Biarritz at 16km. The architecture was impressive, with old fancy hotels perched on the cliff tops. We stopped for an overpriced coffee an croissant in one of the main squares.
Continuing on, we arrived at Hendaye at 40km with Viki demanding her muesli or else she would surely faint. To avoid injury, we stopped on some benches on the main beach and had our breakfast. This was also the official end of the Raid Pyrenean, which was the roughly 800km route we had originally intended to follow through the pyranees.
On leaving Hendaye we said our Au Revoirs to France as we entered the Spanish town of Irun, where we tried to become official pilgrims of the Camino de Santiago, but the albergue didn’t open until 4pm so we’ll wait to register until Bilbao.
Then began the final push to San Sebastian, which was along busy (but at least smooth and straight) highway. It wasn’t scenic at all until the very end when we got to the main beach, the Concha, and cycled through the high-walled store and restaurant dense section of old town.
We found our hotel (€64) right downtown, showered and washed our clothes and spent the next few hours restaurant hopping trying pintxos from the different establishments. It was fun, though they were infinitely more touristy amd a bit more pricey than what we’d been to in Girona (ie – the servers here ask if you want to be served in English, French, Spanish, Italian, or German. And they can speak them all). We went to 4 pintxos bars (a pintxo or caña was €2.50 everywhere) and finished off with a delicious basque cheesecake from a popular bar called La Viña.
