We left our chateau in Bordeaux and made our way towards Spain. On the way, we stopped at a small seaside town called Arcachon for a coffee. Arcachon is right next to a natural phenomenon called the Dune of Pilat. It’s basically the tallest sand dune in Europe. It rises over 106 meters high along France’s Atlantic coast, offering panoramic views of the ocean, forest, and Arcachon Bay. It stretches about 2.7 kilometres in length, 500–600 meters in width and contains roughly 60 million cubic meters of sand.

We parked the car and walked to the base of the dune. It was stinking hot and initially we were debating whether to bother walking up to the top. It was huge. There was a staircase, though and I was keen to go. Dennis decided to join me and the girls decided to wait at the bottom. We hiked up to the top and the views across the Atlantic were amazing. We were disappointed for the girls once we saw the view, but turned around to see them hauling ass up the steps. We all took some shots and then thought we would skip the steps and descend down the sand. It was impossible to wear shoes, and by the time we got to the bottom our feet were on fire from the hot sand.

We then began the long, 3.5 hour drive to our next stop, San Sebastian. We crossed the border into Spain and entered the city, which is part of the Basque region and sandwiched between the Pyrenees Mountains and the sea.

It took us a while to find the carpark. The traffic was heavy and the roads confusing. Google Maps was lost. Eventually I could see that I was in the wrong lane at a red light and had to turn right. I checked my two side mirrors, saw there was no one behind me, banged the car in reverse and started backing. I heard a lot of yelling from inside and outside the car until I realised (by looking in the reversing camera) that there was a motorcycle right behind me. Fortunately, I didn’t hit him and he survived the incident.

We parked the car and ascended the lift into a magic wonderland. San Sebastian is a stunning city. The buildings wrap around a massive, semi-circular beach, with two mountains standing like bookends on each side. One of the mountains has a huge statue of Jesus looking over the city.

We wheeled our suitcases around the promenade with our heads on swivels, taking in the spectacular scenery and made our way to our apartment, which would be our home for the next three nights. It was again very hot and when we arrived, Dennis opened the roller-door shutter blind on the door out to the balcony and opened the door to let some fresh air into the place. Linda ducked under the roller blind to stand on the balcony and check out the local area. She then turned around and with a loud clang, face-planted the roller shutter on her way in. Now she has a sore knee and a sore head.

That evening we walked back around the promenade to the old town, where we met a guide for a food walking tour around San Sebastian. Clara was fantastic, a lovely, passionate woman who took us around the old town for a pintxo crawl. Pintxo (pronounced pincho), is the Basque version of tapas. There are pintxo bars all over the old town and the idea is to go to one, have two or three bites with a drink, then move on to the next bar. The bars display their different pintxos in glass counters, and you choose a couple and generally eat them standing up in the street.

The old town was alive with energy. The locals tend to use the pintxo bars as a means of socialisation and dinner, given their apartments are mostly too small to entertain. We hit five different bars on our crawl, enjoying delicious dishes at every stop. We had beautiful, small portions of scallop, artichoke, anchovies, beef sirloin, mushrooms, prosciutto and many, many more. The highlight for everyone was a chorizo sausage wrapped in home-made pastry. A Basque sausage roll! We finished with Basque cheesecake ice cream and rolled back to our apartment to sleep it all off.

The next morning Lidia and I wandered through the old town exploring and found a fresh food market. It had cheese shops, deli’s, fresh fruit, fish, etc., but was quite small. I did find chocolate covered gorgonzola in a cheese shop. I thought it was delicious and so bought some for everyone else. We met up with them later I the morning and I excitedly gave them their treats. It was unanimously decided by them that they were disgusting amongst the whingeing and sour faces. I obviously have a more sophisticated palate than those heathens.

We had some delicious pintxo for lunch, including a truffle risotto which Lidia loved and some delicious roasted piquillo peppers.

After this, Lidia and I decided to head to the other side of the bay to ascend the funicular to the lookout point. It was crazy hot and there wasn’t much shade, so I tried to call an Uber. Unfortunately, there was a 17 minute wait, so we decided to brave the heat and make the 30 minute walk over there.

We arrived hot and bothered and sat on the 115-year-old funicular waiting for it to ascend. A cacophonic din enveloped us as a school group of about 50 little kids lined up. They were very loud and we were kind of hoping they’d take the next carriage, but they invaded the carriages and we started to ascend. As the funicular rose on it’s 45-degree angle to the top of the mountain, the kids all started singing songs in Spanish. It sounded really cute and actually added to the experience.

When we disembarked our carriage we were blown away by the expansive views across San Sebastian. This city is one of the most spectacular cities we’ve seen. We enjoyed a beer in the bar overlooking the incredible vista.

That afternoon, Linda and Dennis’ son Mark arrived on a bus and joined us. We took him into the old town to revisit some of our favourite pintxo bars.

The next day all 7 of us walked up the mountain on the other side of the beach to see the statue of Jesus and enjoy the views from that side. It was a little overcast, but the views were still great and we all enjoyed a drink at the bar overlooking the city. For lunch, we wanted to try a pintxo bar recommended to us called Kapadokia that specialised in tortilla, so we went there and had some delicious tortilla and chili mussel croquettes. Another outstanding meal where the waiter made us the best sangria we’ve ever had from scratch.

This was our last night in San Sebastian and the next day we loaded up the cars and headed for Bilbao. Lidia and I took one of the cars and he rest pile into Rob’s so that they could stop at a beach village along the way. Rob was keen to see the famous surf beach there.

We hit Bilbao, left the luggage in the car and went straight into the city. We had only one night here, so were keen to see as much as we could in that time. Lidia was excited to see the “Guggenhymen”, as she put it. I was more interested in the Guggenheim. We walked past this stunning Museum, a remarkable piece of architecture designed by Frank Gehring, with some interesting sculptures around it, including a dog made from flowers simply called “Puppy”. There was a group building a human tower next to Puppy, which added to the atmosphere.

We walked along the river to the old town and then found a town square with pintxo bars all around it and sat down for some lunch. After exploring the old town some more we walked back to the car to offload the luggage and meet everyone else. We accessed our apartment for the night and then went back into the old town to enjoy a drink and look around. For dinner, Mark and Dennis parked themselves in a bar to watch the soccer and the rest of us had a huge plate of fried calamari and a sangria (or two).

That night, after returning to our apartment, we all bunked down to sleep. Mark was on the terribly uncomfortable couch with only a thin blanket. I was fast asleep when I was woken at 1:00am with a commotion. I opened my eyes to see a fireman in full gear with a breathing mask on standing outside our room. The fire alarms were going off and I could immediately smell thick smoke. There was a lot of yelling going on in Spanish, which we took to mean “get the hell out of here”. We evacuated the building, still in a stupor, to find that the building next door had caught on fire. The fire department hurried in and out of our building with large fans as the paramedics took our blood oxygen levels. We had to wait half an hour before we could go back to bed, but we were so wired we couldn’t get to sleep for hours, and the smell of smoke was still very strong.

The next day Mark told us that he’d woken up half an hour before we did, hearing a commotion outside the apartment. He opened the door to tell the neighbours to be quiet, saw everyone running around outside, then shut the door and went back to bed. Obviously to a 21-year-old sleep is way more important than your parents and their friends burning to death in a blazing fire, but hey, we all have different priorities in life.

Other than some scratchy throats, though, we were all fine, other than being very tired. The fire made the local papers and the owners of the apartment offered us a free night, but we were already booked into our next accommodation and declined, leaving burning Bilbao behind.