45 miles
We woke up and did our usual stop at the Dia and also charged my cindy’s cell phone plan. Left at 1215 pm. We left late because I wanted to do a bike cleaning session before we got back on the road since our chains we’re getting really bad. As always we had to start with a long climb. It is ironic because no matter what we do we seem to have long climbs every day. Once again we were high up in the hills and everything was super green. Small farm houses and very small towns dotted the country side. As we got close to the French border, we came across a border town with tons of stores where everybody was coming from France to buy things in Spain for much cheaper. It was the first time we had seen traffic for many days. Once over the French border, we were forced to climb once last mountain/col before dropping down into the seaside town of As Saint John de Luz. St. John was actually a beautiful town and very upscale. We stopped at a supermarket and got some lunch and sat by the boats to enjoy the sun and to try to figure out what to do. The plan was to take a train from St. jean de luz to to San Sebastian. It turns out there were only two trains that would take bicycles and they were not going to be coming for many hours so we decided to do the bike ride from St. John south to Hendaye and then to take a local train from Hendaye to San Sebastian. So we biked south ( in the opposite direction of our final destination of Amsterdam) for 15 miles along the coastline to Hendaye. Oddly enough, we had biked this section five years prior on our first biking trip to Europe ( 2014). This turned out to be a great decision because we got to go through an area along the coast that was absolutely beautiful. We caught the local train and it only cost $2.30 to go from Hendaye to San Sebastián. As it was way to expensive to stay in the city of San Sebastain ( most hotels were going for over $200 a night), I found a great Air B n B house overlooking the city for only $50 a night. The house is a million dollar home where the guy rents our each of his 5 rooms to tourists and serves breakfast. Quite a deal! We biked from the train station to this house and did not arrive until 8 pm. Somehow we managed to find the energy to take the bus down into the city at around by 9 pm and by 1 am we were back at the house and exhausted! I am going to write and entire post just dedicated to San Sebastain as it deserves its own post. Let’s just say that it is truly a special place!
She Pedals the world 