San Sebastián

San Sebastián is a city of under two hundred thousand where dinner is eaten standing up, one piece at a time, in bars packed side by side. The same food culture supports three restaurants with three Michelin stars within ten kilometres, so one week can hold a five-euro meal and a two-hundred-euro one.

Pintxos are not tapas. They don't come with the drink; each is paid for separately, around three to four euros a piece, and the hot ones are made to order rather than left on the counter. The rule is one per bar, two at most, then move on — the Parte Vieja packs dozens of bars into a few streets, so a whole dinner fits inside three hundred metres. It happens in two waves, around one in the afternoon and after eight in the evening; in between the city empties.

La Concha bay is closed off by hills on both sides, which is why the water here is never rough. To the east stands Urgull with its fortress and a twelve-and-a-half-metre statue of the Sacred Heart; twenty minutes on foot and free. To the west is Igeldo, a summit a hundred and eighty-one metres above the sea, reached by an old funicular. At the top sits a small amusement park from another era, and the view on every postcard of the city.

Rain is part of the deal: around one thousand six hundred and fifty millimetres a year across some hundred and forty wet days, more than London gets. That is why it is greener than the rest of Spain and why summer here means twenty-one degrees rather than thirty-eight. The other surprise is the language: Basque is related to no other known language in Europe, half the adults in Gipuzkoa speak it fluently, and the city's name in it is Donostia — which is what the signs say too.