White Plains’ 4th Best Personal Blog

For some reason, maybe because I started writing this in Tulsa (more on that, I suppose, in a future post), the Jayhawks song “Tampa to Tulsa” keeps going through my head while I try to compose this recap of our time in Santiago de Compostela and San Sebastián and the trip between the two cities. Admittedly, “Santiago to San Sebastián” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. But I guess for me, at least, the song evokes a long journey. And our 11-hour train ride across northern Spain was nothing if not long. It wasn’t entirely terrible, though. At any rate, I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

When we left off in Lisbon, we were about to catch a flight to Santiago. It’s the main city in Galicia in the northwest corner of the Iberian peninsula and, during medieval times, was one of the biggest pilgrimage sites in all of Christianity. Getting from Lisbon to Santiago was actually one of the big travel dilemmas of the trip — thanks, Wilco tour routing! — and we uncharacteristically left it unsettled until just a few days before. Our initial plan was to take a bus that would get us there relatively inexpensively, although taking about 10 hours to do so. Since we couldn’t buy the bus tickets in advance anyway, we waited to see if a potential car ride with a friend might materialize. When that didn’t work out, we were back to the bus. But after a quick Internet search and with a daylong train ride from Santiago to San Sebastián already looming, we ultimately made the grudging decision to trade some cash for a little peace of mind and booked ourselves onto a flight. In hindsight, I think it was probably a good move.

By flying instead of busing, we were able to explore Santiago’s famed cathedral a bit instead of only getting a fleeting glimpse at some ungodly hour. That would almost certainly have been our fate if we had decided to take the bus. And as we learned in Granada, it would have been a minor tragedy to visit a city with a famed attraction and not see it. I’m not going to say anything else about Santiago since my tag-team partner Brianne has already written a nice account of our time there on her blog and I doubt I could do better.

After Santiago, it was time to catch our train to San Sebastián. We initially planned to split a rental car with friends Dunja and Rob, but at some point, the decision was made to take the train instead. And although it was a long ride, weaving its way across the rugged Spanish countryside and stopping at any number of towns and cities, I have to say it was kind of enjoyable in a weird way. There was a café car nearby with a good supply of bocadillos and bebidas, and I just managed to finish the Jimi Hendrix biography I was reading, Also, I had made a surprisingly prescient purchase of a road map of Spain and it was interesting to follow our progress across the country.

What can I say about San Sebastián except that our two nights and one full day there were phenomenal? Part of that certainly had to do with the beautiful weather. And it also didn’t hurt that our hotel was literally a block from the crescent-shaped Playa de la Concha (pictured above). I’m generally a sucker for any place where you can seemingly be surrounded by urban hustle and bustle one minute and be swimming the next. San Sebastián, like Sydney, Australia, is one of those places. So despite having just a short time to do so, it was a treat to be able to take a quick dip in the Bay of Biscay and enjoy its exceedingly tranquil waters.

Other highlights of our time in San Sebastián included a very boozy evening with Dunja and Rob and Dunja’s parents on our first night in town. Much of the evening, for me anyway, will forever be lost in a haze of pacharán — a potent liqueur with flavors of sloe berries and anise — though I know that some incriminating photographic evidence exists. And we enjoyed a delicious prix fixe lunch in Martín Berasategui’s Michelin-rated Kursaal MB restaurant that, coincidentally, happened to be located at the concert venue. My main course, pictured below, was a Donostia-style stewed spider crab with a parsley foam (I believe it was actually called “parsley air.”).

Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to explore much of San Sebastián beyond the triangle between the old town (the Parte Vieja) and its adjacent hill (the Monte Urgull), the general vicinity of our hotel and the area around the venue itself. It would be nice to be able to go back and spend a few relaxing days there.

But relaxing was not often in our vocabulary on this trip, and so after our ninth Wilco show — which I think I’ll honestly remember more for the ticketing shenanigans than the show itself — we were on the move once again. (People who had bought tickets through the fan club presale were assigned some very mediocre seats and there was a sort of free-for-all in the hours immediately preceding the show to try to obtain better seats; fortunately our new friends Bea and Juan, as well as Dunja and Rob, managed to reach a pretty satisfactory resolution and we also benefitted somewhat from their success.)

Anyway I can’t say that San Sebastián was the most memorable show of the tour, but it was indisputably one of the most memorable cities. Fortunately, we would conclude our time in Spain with what promised to be another highly memorable city, Barcelona. Of course, it wouldn’t be fitting for this trip if we had a straightforward journey there. But at least this one only involved a pleasant hour-long bus ride from San Sebastián to Bilbao and a subsequent flight to Barcelona. As we had learned, it could have been worse.

Wilco//6-01-09//Palacio de Congresos e Exposicións de Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, SPAIN//support: none

Wilco (the song)/IATTBYH/Pot Kettle Black/A Shot in the Arm/Side With The Seeds/Handshake Drugs/Bull Black Nova/You Are My Face/War On War/Jesus, etc./Impossible Germany/The Late Greats/You Never Know/Hate It Here/Walken/I’m The Man Who Loves You/Hummingbird//e1: Misunderstood/Poor Places>/Spiders (Kidsmoke)//e2: Kingpin/Monday/Hoodoo Voodoo

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Wilco//6-3-09//Kursaal, Donostia-San Sebastián, SPAIN//support: none

You Are My Face/Wilco (the song)/IATTBYH/One Wing/Muzzle of Bees/A Shot in the Arm/Side With The Seeds/Handshake Drugs/Bull Black Nova/Jesus, etc./Impossible Germany/I’ll Fight/California Stars/The Late Greats/Hummingbird//e1: Via Chicago>/Spiders (Kidsmoke)//e2: Hate It Here/Walken/I’m The Man Who Loves You/I’m A Wheel