Later on in our trip I’d grow to appreciate siestas. Just like the Spanish, I love naps, breaks, big lunches, and just generally being lazy so I can save up my energy for drinking later that night. But after 20+ hours of traveling, having to wait another three hours for the rental car agent to return from his siesta had me officially declaring Spain the most inefficient country in the most inefficient union in the world. I get all anti-socialist when I’m tired and cranky.
It was the slowest time of day during the slowest time of year at the sleepy San Sebastian airport. We waited in the cafeteria and drank Amstel Regulars and Etxeko (a liquorice -y, sweet, if uncomplex, fortified Basque wine) while we watched the Guardia Civil “take their café con leches” and try to look intimidating in green windbreakers.
An excerpt from our conversation re siestas-
-L, “So do people in Europe just hang out a lot?”
-C, “I dunno. That’s the gist I get.”
It wasn’t an entire waste of time as I found an information desk with magazines welcoming us to Gipuzkoa: the most fun-to-say province in Spain’s Basque country. Amongst enlighteningly- translated tidbits about Basque culture such as “Inland, beef is the main protagonist,” we also learned that we were fortuitously in the area during the Tamborrada. A festival of unexplained provenance/purpose, the Tamborrada involves 24 continuous hours of San Sebastian adults and children inexplicably dressing up as chefs or soldiers and banging on barrels and drums. Also, as we would find out later, a lot of drinking.
After finally retrieving our Renault “Picasso” from our refreshed-looking rental agent, we went to our hotel for our own mini siesta before dining at Arzak. We stayed in the Astoria 7 a rebuilt cinema turned contemporary hotel. Each of its rooms is “individually dedicated to personalities, actors, actresses or directors, who have attended the San Sebastián International Film Festival ever since it first edition in 1953.” We stayed in the Dennis Hopper room, two doors down from the Mel Gibson room and down the hall from Glen Close, where we both learned from the poster above the bed that Mr. Hopper had died last May.
We had a fabulous meal at Arzak later that night. But, that will get its own post.
Inadvertent drug references at Astoria 7