San Sebastián charmed my pants off. It’s a laid-back surfer town with beautiful beaches, strong culture, friendly people with impeccable taste and style, great shopping, an active lifestyle, incredible food, affordably fancy wine, and accents galore. And living a balance of city and island ways is a way of life for people there.
You can feel San Sebastián’s history as you make your way through town. Plaza de la Constitución used to be City Hall back in the day and is a main square in town where beautiful buildings line the plaza one vibrant yellow balcony at a time. To this day, you will notice numbers left over from its past when the plaza was used as a bullring — even if you owned an apartment here, the City retained rights to the balconies, which it could sell as box seats to paying spectators. Restaurants, cafes and other storefronts have since moved into the arcade below.
The good vibes you get from San Sebastián can be felt in the other coastal towns in Basque Country. Every single one we visited had the same urban island way of living to them and yet no two are alike — they each are their own with something memorable to offer. San Sebastián was a lovely introduction to all of that.