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’s 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 hugging it in at both ends. You can walk every bit of it, and trust me, you’ll want to.

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

I’d give it three nights at the very least, and four if you want Chillida Leku and a day out along the coast, which I really hope you do.