I thought my baguette eating days were behind me however as we were still in France this morning, my options were; not eating breakfast (which one should never do as breakfast is the most important meal of the day and kick starts your metabolism) or eating a baguette or some type of crossaint for breakfast.  I opted for what I felt was the healthiest option and chose the baguette and an espresso.  I was way too tired to even attempt to ask for a skinny cappuccino!!

Two train rides and two taxis later we arrived in San Sebastian”Que Pasa Mi Amgo”!!

I was almost in a food coma from Paris, seriously if I consumed one more baguette I think I would go in to cardiac arrest because as delicious as they are I was having a carbohydrate overload!!  Don’t get me wrong, unprocessed good carbohydrates are required for a well balanced diet but this was far from what I had been consuming..   I was feeling rather sluggish from the Parisian rich food so I was excited to try another European cusine.

San Sebastian is famous for Pintxos bars which is their local word for tapas..  Some bars actually put sandwhich like pintxos on the bar top and sell these but the better bars make their pinxtos fresh, we tried both.  I felt I was doing a pub crawl but with pintxos snacks..  We started off at a pintxos bar (sorry the name escapes me) where you order from a menu, we ordered a few to share.  We ordered a relatively healthy fish pintxos but it was a little tasteless to be honest.  The boyfriend (Sean) was eager to try their mini burger, I ate close to half but was not a fan as it tasted very fatty and was served with a few deep fried banana chips.  The crazed carnivores out there probably would have liked it, Sean did!!

We then continued on our “Pintxos bar crawl” sampling different bite sized snacks and of course accompanying these with Spanish wine!!

A lot of these pintxos were toppings on pieces of baguette, how did these baguette’s keep finding me!!

A few pintxos bars and several vino’s later we were quite tired with a full tummy!!  I seriously felt I would never be able to eat again EVER!!  The only logical thing to do in Spain was to go for a siesta so we walked back to our hotel and had an afternoon nap!!

Upon waking from our siesta it was time to continue our Pintxos bar crawl, no I wasn’t hungry but figured when in Rome San Sebastian do what the locals do!!

Pintxos are quite tasty but can also be quite heavy and therefore a challenge on the digestive system, I was craving greens and got excited when I saw peppers on a bar top we went to, I wasnt sure how it all worked but was advised they fry the peppers, hmmm… I just wanted fresh clean food but figured I had to try it how the locals did.  I absolutely loved them, they were delicious!!

After I had my fix of greens it was time to move on to one of the more “finer dining” pintxos bars.  We arrived at “Borda-Berri” and ordered off the menu.  We first ordered the ‘roasted octopus with smoked vinaigrette and quince’, it was very tasty but a little sweet for my liking but at least I had escaped the baguette!!

Next was the ‘euskal pork ribs kebab’ which was quite nice and reminded me of French food as it was quite rich.

We thought we would be quite daring and next ordered ‘CRISPY PIG’S EAR WITH TXIMTXURRI’.  I have bought pig ears for my dog in the past so I had the image of a crispy, pork crackling type of dish (but made for human consumption) in my head.  I tasted a small piece but it was very fatty so Sean ended up eating it, he also found it too fatty for his liking.  I had no idea what tximtxurri was and have since done a quick Google search however my findings were in Spanish so this will forever be a mystery to me.

We saw someone order the ‘ravioli with leeks-sweetbread-lemongrass’ and it looked quite elegant so we ordered that also.  For those of you who have an image of “sweetbread” as pieces of bread made with sugar, you are wrong!!  Sweetbread is actually the culinary name for the thymus or the pancreas especially of the calf and lamb.  I only had a small piece as the thought of eating pancreas was a little off-putting.

What I had no problem eating was the ‘chocolate ganache with cointreau’ which was a chocolate mousse dessert.  This was far from being healthy but had both poppy and sesame seeds sprinkled on top, both of which contain health-benefiting nutrients, antioxidants and vitamins that are extremely important for well-being, however the miniscule amount I consumed would not have benefited me on this occasion.

It is difficult when healthy food is not available along my quirky adventures but tomorrow I will aim to find healthier alternatives!