Friday, April 3, 2015

Donibane Lohitzune

Donibane Lohitzune (St. Jean de la Luz in French), is a small seaside town in Lapurdi, in Iparralde (the French part of the Basque Country). Once famous for its corsairs and pirates, it is nowadays more renowned for its nice light, its beach and historical buildings. We dropped by on Easter Thursday, had a fantastic meal at Kaiku and a walk around town, and ended up buying too much sheep cheese from Iraty (one of my absolute favourites).


Erromardia Beach


 Beachfront houses with walkways to the protective barrier.



Church of St. John the Bishop

 Chocolate-something dessert, Kaiku

Sunday, March 22, 2015

A walk in Ibai-Eder

Ibai-Eder (means "beautiful river" in English) is a water reservoir outside Azpeitia. You can park on the road crossing the dam and walk around the reservoir, like we did. According to the internet, this is 6 km, but in reality it is 8.5. It is a flat and easy walk through some nice forest and we met almost nobody, except many birds, like marsh-tits (Parus palustris / Entita / Caraboñero palustre / Kaskabeltz txiki), bullfinches (Pyrrhula pyrrhula / Domherre /  Camachuelo / Gailupa) and Long-tailed tits (Aegithalos caudatus / Stjärtmes / Mito / Buztanluze).






Sunday, March 8, 2015

Food overload Part 2 - Visitng a cider house (sagardotegi)

Outside Hernani in Gipuzkoa lies the typical Basque cider house (sagardotegi / cidería) where lots of the awesome cider typical of the region is being produced and drunk every year. We visited and ate a typical sagardotegi menu with cod omelet, cod with peppers and tomato and a huge beef chop, finished off with sheep cheese, membrillo (quince cheese) and walnuts, and washed down with generous amounts, of course, of cider.


 
Txotx is the most important tradition and means simply to go and drink the cider straight out of the barrel

























Some of the food

 

Another good thing with this place was that it has lots of nice walks nearby, so this we tried out afterwards, to start digesting the pretty heavy meal and the litres of cider..



Saturday, March 7, 2015

Food overload in Donostia with Agur, Limpan and Johannes

Tjena! At the time of writing, being too full to really commit to any in-depth descriptions, here are some hipster food-shots from a weekend of excess, to be continued tomorrow.

Places visited: 
Zintziri Errota, Bakio
Justa, Zumaia
Kokotxa*, Donostia
Zeroku, Donostia