Finally we arrived in fascinating San Sebastián, a city that had long been on our wish list – only to realise that it’s real name (in Basque) is Donostia.

We had lots of fun learning a bit of Basque. The language is completely unrelated to any other in Western Europe and linguists have concluded that it pre-dates any Indo- European language. However with over 2 million speakers in this autonomous region of Spain, the language and culture it represents is a powerful force.

So we taught the boys to say Kaitxo instead of Buenos Días and launched ourselves enthusiastically into Basque traditions which (to us outsiders) seemed to mainly consist of protesting (we saw 3 official protests in 4 days) and consuming great quantities of gourmet food and drink (Pintxos, Txakoli, Sagardoa etc). 

Speaking of food – Donostia restaurants collectively have earned 16 Michelin stars (the only place in the world with more is Kyoto, Japan) and eating out is practically a competitive sport, so deciding what and where to eat in this gourmet city was a Big Challenge. Luckily the Wild Berry Boys are easy enough to feed and they like to eat good Spanish staples like calamari, prawns, olives etc. They did have a few hungry moments but that was more to do with strange Spanish customary eating times than anything else. These are something along the lines of: first breakfast at 7am, second breakfast at 10am, lunch from 2pm to approx 4pm, siesta, snack at 6pm, dinner at 10pm. Small children are expected to partake in all meals. If you eat outside of these times, you are at great risk of being served bland tourist mush. The Wild Berry Boys adjusted but sometimes were quite happy eating bland mush as well. And all the playgrounds, fountains, carousels, motorbikes, cars, diggers and statues of Don Quixote provided great entertainment while the WBB mums hung out in Pintxos bars, that is to say, supervised carefully.

We were lucky enough to be in Donostia during the Kontxako Bandera – a race where about 20 teams row fishing boats called estropada from the main beach to an island in the Bay of Biscay and back again. It was completely chaotic and crazy; we couldn’t follow anything and couldn’t see anything except for crowds of happy people decked out in the various bright team colours. It looked as though the purple team won on the day because they were the happiest and noisiest (though definitely not 100% sure on that). We listened to traditional Basque music which sounds exactly like what you would hear anywhere in the West of Ireland and the whole day had a feel just like St Patrick’s Day in Dublin – with people drinking Sagardoa and Txakoli instead of Guinness and eating Pintxos instead of Abrakebabra at the end of the night. To add to the feeling of Irishness, it flogged rain all day long but in true Celtic spirit the party carried on regardless.