It's tourist -- I mean cider season!

We came here to see the real thing. We aren't interested in spending a lot of money for sight-seeing, swanky hotels, and guided tours. We came here to meet locals, eat their food, and wander off the beaten path. We're not tourists, we're travelers.

That's what I said -- or maybe you said that -- actually I think it was a kid from my high school -- maybe some random blogger on the internet? I guess it doesn't matter.

What does matter is that this kind of trip doesn't really exist. Try as we might, Elliot and I will not leave Spain knowing how the people here live. Mostly because we have no foundation here: no family, no friends from childhood, no tradition. And yet we consistently attempt to throw ourselves into the lives of others. Not rudely, of course -- we always wait for an invite. But we'll gladly join your dinner on Christmas Eve or your housewarming party. We genuinely want to learn your traditions.

Take a cidery, for example. This kind of establishment is a major part of basque culture, and highly visible throughout this region. Elliot and I have already been to a "cidery" in Pamplona a couple times. It was less a place of production, and more a restaurant. But we loved the style of having a meal at a sidrería.

Elliot standing in front of the cidery in Astigarraga.

They start you off with some chorizo a la sidra, which consists of some delicious sausage cooked in cider. Then you move onto your second course: pimientos piquillos (closely related to roasted red peppers) and a tortilla de bacalao, which is what we Americans would recognize as a big ol' fish omelet. Next, your main course: txuleton (pronounced chu-le-TON), which is a briefly cooked slab of steak from near the cow's ribs or spine. Finally, dessert. And all the while, you're drinking as much cider as you can stand from a tap in the wall. When you leave, you pay a flat rate per person (usually in the ballpark of $35-40).

Halfway through the txuleton; as you can see it's served pretty pink on the inside.

Cheese, jam, and walnuts for dessert. At this point, I wasn't super hungry.

Our experience in Pamplona was great: food, drink, and atmosphere all added to our enjoyment of the place. But when you get right down to it, that place just ain't a cidery. It's a restaurant. So off to San Sebastian we went this past weekend.

View of San Sebastian from a hillside. During July and August, that beach is swarming.

An aside: A few weeks ago, when we were planning a sort of get-away, we considered Paris. After all, it would be the weekend before Valentine's Day, and I had never been. We quickly realized the great expense involved in getting there (let alone staying there), and thus settled on a spot a little closer to Pamplona. That was San Sebastian: 20 km away from the French border, but only an hour away from Pamplona by bus!

We stayed at Hotel Parma, right where the river meets the ocean. And boy did we have a view!

San Sebastian (or Donosti as it's called in basque) is an awesome little seaside town in Northern Spain, on the coast of the Baltic Sea. It's also a lot more basque than Pamplona, so you see and hear the language everywhere. Our plan was to arrive, eat, drink, and sleep on a hotel bed in a room with heat. We also wanted to check out the city's aquarium, and do some walking along the coast. Talk about a tourist adventure!

All the signs in the aquarium were in four langauges: Basque, Spanish, French, & English.

That green thing is a little shark egg, and that shadow inside is a little baby shark!

On the previous Thursday, we mentioned to a friend that we would be staying in San Sebastian that weekend. And to our surprise, he said: "Well, hey! My girl and I are going to be in Donosti, too! And we also want to go to a cidery!" (Notice: dialogue not a direct translation, nor even a real memory of what was said)

Sure enough, as soon as we got of the bus, our friends were on their way to pick us up and take us out into the country to visit a real, authentic cidery in the mountains. Elliot and I shouted "Ye haw!" and we set out to fill our bellies with food and bubbly ferments.

Find the apple!

To avoid redundancy, I'll just say the menu was pretty much the same. The portions were a little bigger, and the food tasted a little better, but we knew what to expect.

It's like a kegger, except with cider...and way better food.

The atmosphere, though -- totally different. There we were, in this big hall with eight or nine huge cider tanks (some were metal, and some were wooden barrels). Everyone ate at great long wooden tables, communal style; and no one sat down, for two reasons.

1. It was cold as shit. I'm saying the temperature inside was equal to the temperature outside (even in the bathrooms!) and so everyone was standing to eat, wiggling their hips and doin' the little cold pants dance.

2. We were at a cidery. And there's a method to drinkin' the stuff. It involves filling up your glass at an angle to produce more carbonation, and only filling up your glass a little so you can drink what's in it before the bubbles disappear. If you don't make it to the bottom of your glass before your cider goes flat, you pitch the remains in one of the various buckets positioned in front of the tanks. Thus, if you want to drink a lot of cider, you kinda gotta stand around the barrel.

Awesome action shot showing how you have to catch the cider in your cup from a distance.
No kidding! Had to use the "sports" setting on my camera.

In Pamplona, we only had one cider tap to choose from. In the little village of Astigarraga we had several, and they all had different tastes. Some were noticeably more sour or sweet, some were strong, some were bitter. They all used the same apples, but little things can affect the way a ferment turns out. So you end up with several different ciders. As we drank more, we started to notice which tanks the guests (including ourselves) preferred.

That's one of the many cider barrels to the left, and an old but very functional apple press on the right.

I'd like to think we were among village natives, or at the very least people from Donosti. But alas, we were not the only out-of-towners. Knowledge of the cidery tradition is spreading, and the region where cider is often made gains more tourists every year from neighboring cities, and even neighboring countries (like France). Our friends were explaining that many people have even started arranging tour buses that struggle up and down mountain sides to transport people to these village establishments. Elliot and I aren't the only foreigners that love a good meal and endless booze.

While I can certainly acknowledge that our weekend get-away would have been largely different had we not gotten a lift from friends outside the city, it's hard to ignore my own role as a naive tourist. Even when you think you may have found a hole-in-the-wall, a secret place that has preserved its tradition and authenticity, chances are it isn't what it seems. It only takes one person to post something on the internet (as I do now) to let the cat outta the bag.

Sometimes I think this situation in Europe is far more advanced than in other continents, mostly because everyone wants to travel in Europe -- even Europeans. People are enchanted with the old and traditional. They marvel at the little villages, the stone houses, maybe even the clothes hanging outside a window to dry. It seems like you have a better chance of escaping tourist exploitation in the US -- but maybe I just think that because I'm American. After all, I know more people, more places.

I suppose you could even compare the cideries in basque country to the vineyards in California. Eating in cideries was once a tradition for the basque people to decide what bottles they were going to take home for the year. Similarly, wine tasting rooms were a way for people to get to know grape-growers and wine-makers, as well as their products. Now both are tourist destinations for natives and foreigners alike.

Me, me, me! Hammin' it up like a tourist should. That's San Sebastian's port behind me.

I can't say tourism is bad -- I'm a tourist. But what's too much? When is authenticity lost?