san sebastion........

ok, so there is a story in gourmet magazine about san sebastion.......where the players in the sun also rises enjoyed cool drinks and elegant banter by the bay before moving on to pamplona.......i had intended our intrepid car-load to stop for a quaint lunch before driving on to bilbao.....but it was not to be......one of our party forgot her coat back at the hotel in hondaribbia.....and then there was the gale-force winds and the marathon that kept us from getting a good look at the opera house on the water's edge..... it was the place we saw the basque separatist grafitti.......but it was also the palce where i held up the line getting otu of the underground parking garage because i didn't understand the system......and then there was detour to see guernica...the town that inspired piccasso's painting...and then bilbao...where i parked too far from the hotel.....sorry rachel........but back to gourmet magazine.....the most unusual food photo was included.......a finished meal..the kind that only servers see when they clear the table..complete with the bones of stripped and licked lamb chops.......not the ordinary sort of print....but it did get my attention........i could go back to northern spain......back to the place we stayed in hondaribbia.......with the fabulous breakfast buffet...and the view......maybe this time with sunny weather.......and more time at bilboa.....the lunch in the museum restaurant was heavenly.......and every time i see a kandinsky painting i am certain that i saw it's twin in bilbao.......and speaking of paintings......i completely neglected to include in rachel's memory book the bit about the madonna and child paintings we saw over all of our journeys throughout northern europe whereupon the babies looked sickly thin and close to death....possibly because the madonna had breasts positioned much like goiters to make for a tighter cluster of mother and child in an oval frame........there were so many paintings that look so alike in these two parameters that they must purchased paint-by-number kits.........maybe there is a book in that......heck...the davinci code sold well on scanty proof.........