San Sebastián

San Sebastián is the most purely enjoyable small city I know, and I say that having spent a lot of my life looking for places that are. It is a town of about a hundred and ninety thousand people wrapped around a shell-shaped bay, with a belle époque seafront on one side, a tangle of bar-lined lanes on the other, and green hills closing it in at both ends. You can walk every bit of it. You will want to.

What makes it extraordinary is the food, and not in the way people usually mean. Yes, there is a concentration of starred restaurants here that is remarkable for a city this size. But the real pleasure is at counter height – the pintxo bars of the Parte Vieja, where you stand up, order one thing, eat it, pay, and move on to the next place. It is the most sociable way of eating anywhere in Europe and it costs almost nothing.

Three nights minimum. Four if you want Chillida Leku and a day out along the coast, which you should.