We arrived in Donostia on Sunday and, after checking in, went for a walk. We ended up in the San Telmo museum. The architecture – a modern concrete structure grafted onto an old convent – is interesting, but the content is varied and fascinating. The exhibition on dictatorships was particularly moving.

A view down a street full of tourists. There is a cathedral with a spire in the distance at the end of the street.

Looking down Kale Nagusia towards the cathedral

In the evening, we went in search of food. As we walked south from our hotel, we found ourselves caught up in a phalanx of Real Sociedad fans in blue and white shirts, on their way to the stadium that loomed ahead, for a local derby against Athletic Bilbao (previously).

The restaurant was full of football supporters getting beers for the plaza, where a crowd was drinking, singing along to Basque punk music, and letting off the occasional firework. It wasn’t just locals in the queue: there were Athletic Bilbao fans there too, and no apparent animosity between the rival sides.

I ordered a couple of vegan burgers and beers and gave my name as Pablo because it was just easier that way. I’m reminded of a Japanese friend who, when living in the US, used a different “restaurant name” to make bookings easier.

We started the next morning with brunch, then walked up to the fortress on Mount Urgell for a good view of the sea. The restaurant we had planned for lunch turned out to be on holiday this week, but we found a good alternative. However, the culinary chaos continued at dinner time. The first restaurant we had tentatively planned was closed on Mondays, but at least I had checked before we went. The next one, who claimed to be open on Mondays, definitely were not. We were lucky on the third try.

In summary, don’t go to Donostia on a Monday, as half the city seems to be closed.

Places we did actually manage to eat and drink:

On the whole, Donostia was nice, but it didn’t feel as energetic and fun as Bilbao.

After breakfast at a café on Tuesday, we started our odyssey back to Paris. We had a half-hour journey on the Euskotren back over the border into France, followed by a 4¾ hour TGV inOui direct from Hendaye to Paris. Even with a well-specced train, that was a bit too much, as by the end of the journey my legs were aching and L— was feeling nauseous.

After all that, it wasn’t fun to discover that Paris Métro line 12 was suffering the effects of an earlier technical problem, and we endured half an hour on the journey from hell, packed in like miserable tinned fish.

We ate a fancy dinner of three courses at vegan bistrot Le Potager de Charlotte in Paris (9e). I correctly identified the couple at the next table as Danish using a mental model of Danish pronunciation based solely on the word kamelåså.

The journey back to London was fine except for everything that wasn’t travel. The departure area at Gare du Nord is grim: there aren’t enough places to sit for all the passengers, and the toilets didn’t even have toilet paper. It’s exacerbated by their recommendation to turn up 75 to 90 minutes before departure. That’s ludicrous, of course, and we didn’t, but it does mean that the station is full of people who won’t be taking a train for hours. L— was suffering the lingering effects of the previous day’s journey, and felt so sick by the time we made it to London that we had to rest for an hour or so before she could face the Underground. But it was a sunny day, so we sat out in the square and I used the time to pick up lunch for me and a doughnut for teatime.

In sadder news, we learned on Monday that Dr David W Hughes had died. We was a foundational and pivotal member of London Okinawa Sanshinkai, and he will be missed.

As Duolingo is now a scabby AI-first app I’ve been trying out an alternative in the shape of Say Something. It’s based on recent understanding in how we learn languages, and it offers several languages I’m learning, including Welsh, Irish, and Spanish.

My initial impression is that it’s much more like the way that babies pick up language, prioritising the spoken language over the written, and using repetition of words and expressions in various contexts. I was impressed to be onto conditional verbs within the first half hour of the Irish course.

The travelator in Waterloo tube station is usually booked out by a single advertiser. This week, it’s Texas tourism. Good luck with that one, lads.

A Korean doomsday cult seems to be active in our neighbourhood. I saw a group of them out picking litter in fluorescent tabards advertising their affiliation. The results (less litter) are good, but the methods? The methods are very bad.

There’s a new pope and he’s American. An African pope would have taken a bit of getting used to, perhaps, after one and a half millenia of white guys, but an American? That just seems way outside normal operating parameters.

Links for this week and last: