The weather was supposed to be better than yesterday, but it wasn’t. The rain started around midnight and was still going when we woke up. It kind of put a damper on our plans for going into San Sebastian today. But, Ton did some research and found the San Telmo Museum had a well reviewed Goya exhibition so we had somewhere to go in the rain.
But our first stop was to get some Basque cheese cake that Ton had been looking forward to since we arrived. The cheese cake was invented at La Vina bar and the word was to get there early before the line forms. Luckily for us early means before 1pm in Spain so we were able to get in and share a table with a Japanese couple. The cake lived up to Ton’s high expectations and I also give it a thumbs up. This is not something you should often eat as the recipe calls for 2.2 pounds of cream cheese, 2 cups of sugar, 7 eggs, 2 cups of heavy cream, and 1 tablespoon of flour. It has a flan like texture that makes it distinctive and delicious.
Having taken care of our dessert we decided it was time for some main courses. The thing to do in San Sebastian is a Pintxos crawl, which is like a pub crawl but with food instead of alcohol (sometimes food and alcohol). We moved down the street to a bar that Ton had read about and this time we were seated with a French couple. One of the nice things in Spain is if a table with 4 tables only has two people the restaurants have no problem seating another couple at the table. We had three Pintxos which are small plates like Dim Sum in China. They were all delicious.
The San Telmo museum is an art museum and a Basque cultural museum. The main exhibition was a series of 80 Goya ink drawings known as the black Goya’s. These drawings reflect the conditions during the Napoleonic war and the return to the absolute monarchy after the war. The subject matter is very dark showing the horrors of war and repression in a very explicit way.
He did these drawings in secret as he knew they would not be approved by the post war royalist government. They were discovered after his death.
We spent over an hour looking at all 80 drawings. Some are very graphic depicting executions, mutilations, and rape. For this era when war was glorified they are a striking anti-war statement by one of the greatest Spanish artists.
There was another gallery of pen and ink drawings from famous artists including Picasso, Rodin, Dali, and Goya. There was no theme to the drawings just examples of different artists sketches. We really enjoyed this.
There were two good galleries of Spanish artists we had not heard of that we found interesting. After the art there was an exhibition highlighting the history of the Basques and their role in Spain. There were several audiovisual exhibitions that we sat through that educated us on the role the Basques have played in key parts of history.
Unfortunately, part of the museum was closed in preparation for the 100th annual San Sebastian Film Festival which kicks off today, so we missed out on a couple of good exhibitions. The San Telmo is an excellent museum and it turns out we were lucky the rain drove us in there as we would have missed out on a good day.