I’d been meaning on putting this post up for ages! 🙂
Essentially, we’d been exploring Gipuzkoa (in the Basque Country) for a couple of days and after this humongous lunch, we ventured across the river from Pasai Donibane (the town we were in) to the neighbouring town. It has been raining just before but in true Basque Country weather, the rain cleared up rather quickly and gave room to some much appreciated sunshine! 🙂
On the other side of the river, we headed to a site of some rather important historical significance to the Basque Country…
…but first, a mandatory ‘douche-bag’ photo I’d promised to send to Georgia and Chris! 😉
The Basque Country, especially the villages and towns around the seaside have a strong fishing culture and to celebrate their heritage, an old fashioned ship is being built from scratch which will sail the shores of the Basque country when completed.
Below is a replica of the ‘wreckage version’ of it…
…and below is a replica of the complete version!
Walking through the museum/ship yard, I couldn’t really tell if the statues below are hilarious or terrifying… 🙂 In any case, I found them quite amusing!
Milou was on top form with her poses as we went along…
You could also see the workmen building every single part of the boat by hand! This is how it was done back in the day and it’s important to the project that everything be done as it would have been originally. I’m always impressed by people who can build stuff from scratch so I applaud their skill and dedication!
Below is how much they’d built so far…
We set off eventually back across the river in search of some brilliant views of the Basque country…
Sailing past seaside houses…
…and getting off at the main harbour.
We headed for San Marko Fort…
Where we were shown around the fort. The fort was originally meant to be for defence but was never actually used due to lack of necessity which is definitely a good thing!
For some reason, it felt important that I get a good photo of this slug. Thanks to that, I have almost 20 photos of exactly the same thing! Slugs are quite disgusting to look so I really can not justify or explain my fascination with it.
Finally, we made it to the top of the fort where the rolling hills of Gipuzkoa were on full display, with a touch of evening fog to set them all off nicely!
I got a bit carried away with the photos but considering the stunning haunting beauty of it – I feel like I can be excused a little bit! 😉
We stayed up here till it finally fell dark and made our way back to the car to our home for the night and a marathon dinner session (like seriously, we ate for hours…)
as you already know, maybe it was the people or maybe the abundance of delicious food (I didn’t overthink it) but I’d definitely fallen in love with Gipuzkoa’s charm! It’s so different from what I’d come to expect of Spain and I absolutely loved visiting. If you have missed the other posts on Gipuzkoa – check them out here… and maybe you’ll see why I’m a huge fan of the region and the Spanish Basque country in general. 🙂
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