San Sebastian - Donostia to Málaga

Last nights visit to Bar La Cepa was everything we hoped and a whole lot more.

We headed out at Spanish dinner time, 9pm.
As we wandered in we weren't quite sure how to go about ordering but standing at the bar always seems to be a good way to sort that problem out.
Sure enough, the young bloke not only understood the opening order "Dos vinos, lanyos (that's my interpretation of what was said but I never did find out what 'lanyos' meant)", which got us two quite nice glasses of cold red wine, but also spoke very good English.
I continued to order in Spanglish and he kept answering in English. It worked out well.
This was yet another bar with mountains of desirable pintxos covering the counter but it also had an exposed kitchen which allowed us to see specifically ordered dishes being brought to the tables.
To make things even more difficult there was the "specials" blackboard with at least 50 items.

Thankfully, after placing the food order, the daughter of the owner suggested making some of the dishes only half serves.
Here's a few shots of pintxos heaven, and what it cost -

One of the guapo locals at Bar La Cepa

The kitchen where God surely orders his take-aways

That local guapo and his gorgeous chica 

The dessert closest to the guapo was a custard and almond delight and the other one, which was the "daughter of the owner"s recommendation was a lighter than air cheesecake with berry sauce.
She saw me smiling and asked why.
I told her I felt like I was eating a dish that God had ordered for himself.
She laughed.
I had been serious. 

That local guy, again!

The bill.
Extraordinary value for such exquisite food and drink.

The alarm went off at 04:30 although both of us had been awake for a while. Expectation of an unpleasant waking hour seems to do that.

We showered, answered the door and apologized to a neighbour complaining about our loud radio at "...cinquo de mattina!", drank our Nescafe, finished packing our few final things and headed off into the crisp morning.

Thirty minutes later, as expected, we arrived at the bus terminus.

There were about 20 people aboard this huge and comfortable bus, which left at 06:00am precisely.

We arrived at Loiu Airport in Bilbao 70 minutes later.

I'm glad we did the trip by bus to Bilbao as it gave us a great view of this northern part of Spain.

It doesn't seem to matter how much land is available they all seem to live in multi storey clusters.

The flight to Málaga was another 90 minutes and again without incident.

We're now at the Parador Malaga de Golf, a golf resort hotel. For the very first time during our time in Spain we have encountered insipid and unhelpful staff.

Maybe they have had a brace of golfers that have shot way over par go through this morning and they've just had enough. Who knows?!