It is not really Spain, and that is the point

Arrive understanding one thing and the whole place clicks into focus: the Basque Country is its own thing. The language, Euskara, is unrelated to any other language on earth – not to Spanish, not to French, not to anything in the Indo-European family. The food culture, the architecture, the way people organise an evening: none of it comes from Madrid. San Sebastián is Donostia first and a Spanish city second, and the sooner you stop expecting tapas and flamenco the sooner you start enjoying what is actually here.

The shape of the city

It is wrapped around a bay shaped like a scallop shell, with a hill at each end and an island in the middle. The Parte Vieja, the old town, sits under Monte Urgull in the northeast corner – a dense grid of about fifteen streets that holds the greatest concentration of bars in Europe. The Centro behind the beach is the nineteenth-century grid, elegant and wide, where the grand hotels are. Gros, across the river, is where the surfers and the young crowd live. And the Antiguo runs west towards the Peine del Viento. You can walk between all four in under half an hour.

Eating here works differently

This is the thing people most need to know in advance. The evening is not a dinner reservation; it is a route. You go into a bar, stand up, have one thing and one glass, pay, and walk to the next. Four or five bars over two or three hours. Nobody sits down. Nobody stays. And it is wonderful, but it only works if you stop trying to do it the way you would at home – do not hover waiting for a table, do not order four things at once, and do not start at seven, because nothing is really going until eight thirty.

And then, in the same city, there is the other kind of eating entirely: Arzak and Akelarŕe both with three stars, Amelia and Mugaritz with two, and a handful more with one. Those need booking months ahead.

It rains, and it is green because of it

Forget the Spain in your head. This is the Atlantic coast – lush, hilly, often grey, with a fine drizzle the locals call sirimiri that soaks you without seeming to try. The sea is cold. The hills are the colour of Ireland. Pack a light waterproof whatever the month and treat a wet afternoon as a gift, because it is the best possible excuse for a long lunch.