San Sebastián

Ahhh...one of the most gorgeous beaches in Spain, according to the Spaniards. Combine this with a castle and a giant statue of Jesus on top of a mountain, as well as the most complicated and delicious little snacks you've ever seen, and you have quite a lovely day trip to San Sebastián, in Spain's Basque country, near the French border.
But before being able to bask in this lovely and relaxing view, I managed to get us lost in quite a hilarious misunderstanding that may take away my "intrepid traveler" status.
In order to get to San Sebastián, we decided to take two night buses so that we wouldn't have to pay for a hostel to spend the night. As a result, we rolled into the Basque country half-asleep at around six in the morning. It was around the time we were supposed to be arriving, and I groggily heard the driver announce something that sounded suspiciously close to "San Sebastián". Not wanting to wake up in France by accident, I hurriedly woke up Danielle, my roommate, and we scrambled off the bus.
This being Spain, we knew nothing would be open for another three hours, so we wandered in the dark in 37 degree weather in search of any place that might have a bathroom. We found a band of drunk adolescent Basques that told us to follow them and ended up at a dance club STILL OPEN at 7 in the morning, but when we tried to use the bathroom we noticed that, while people continuously streamed into that one-seater, no one ever came out. Of course, we could barely perceive this since we were forced to take off our glasses, which had immediately fogged up from the smoke upon entering. Feeling more than a little suspicious, we settled on wandering around and trying to find something, anything, that would correspond with the map in my guidebook. Around daylight we were able to find refuge in a café which, although offering very good croissants, was also apparently the favorite hangout of a thin, drunk man slurring obscenities in a mix of Basque and Spanish at an electronic slot machine. For those who don't know, Basque is completely unrelated to Spanish. In fact, they don't really know where it comes from and remains almost a complete mystery to linguists. So it wasn't all that much fun when this guy decides to yell at us in this mysterious language. The only thing we were able to understand was something about the Japanese and the fact that he was probably asking for money from us. I pretended not to hear him, feigning attention at a news report on what Barack Obama thinks about Kurdistan, while Danielle got quite scared. We fled to the bathroom, and expressed our disappointment at not finding the beautiful beach we had heard about by making the following faces:So after having freshened up, we wandered around for quite a bit longer. We ended up following a little old lady who, being very pale and seeming frightened when we asked her where we could get a taxi, and who later completely disappeared in the distance next to a factory, we decided might be either a ghost or a figment of our tired and overactive imaginations. Next to the factory we ended up running into a Romanian cook who was still drunk but had to be at work soon and didn't know where he was either, but luckily he was able to lead us to a taxi. We jumped in excitedly, asking to be taken to the castle. "Very well", the driver said at first, but when he went to put the car into gear he realized he had no idea what castle we were talking about. I showed him the map in my guidebook.
"Ohhh...you want to go to San Sebastián!" he exclaimed, proud that he had figured out our request.
"Yes!", I shouted enthusiastically. And then Danielle and I exclaimed in unison, "But...where are we now?!?"
It turned out that we were in Eibar, about half an hour from where we wanted to be, and it would have cost more to get to San Sebastián in a taxi than the 5 hour bus trip we had just taken from Oviedo. Luckily there was a bus to San Sebastián and nice people that helped us figure out how to take it. I didn't even take a picture there. It was pretty much the opposite of picturesque.
But once we got to San Sebastián we were able to take in the following views:

After meeting up with a friend from Berea, we decided to saunter over to the mountain/castle. On the way were some beautiful old buildings which I enjoyed taking pictures of.

Also, we walked past the port:

Our final destination, though, was Jesus.
The castle was also pretty cool:

And of course, what trip would be complete without taking some time out to relax on some artillery?
On a side note, heaven only knows why, but the mullet is in its renaissance here in Spain. At the castle I was able to snap a picture of the famed mullet/dreadlock combo, one of the most heinous mullet variations: