Basque Country Christmas

It's Christmastime! We arrived in San Sebastian on the 20th of December.
Our pension for the next several nights- Pension Garate.
In San Sebastian, the Basque version of tapas is pintxos. And every night there's a happy hour somewhere, called Pintxopote. This is our first Pinxtopote!
The Pintxopote was held in a gourmet food hall, with a Cuban band and lots of good food and wine.
Mmmm oysters and foie gras for Pintxopote!
The famous Maria Cristina Hotel, lit up for Christmas.
We walked home over the Christmas-lit bridges spanning the Urumea River.
The River Urumea, and San Sebastian's Christmas markets on the left.
Ending our first night in San Sebastian.
The next morning, we explored San Sebastian in the daylight- this is the main beach.
Winter on San Sebastian's beach- just us, and a few humans with their doggies.
San Sebastian's town hall right near the beach- note the giant inflatable Basque man on the 2nd floor!
The entrance to town hall.
A closeup of the inflatable Basque man- I doubt I would come up to his ankles. This balloon was ginormous.
Today is St Tomas Day in San Sebastian. This was the day when villagers would travel to San Sebastian right before Christmas, to pay their yearly taxes and sell goods. It's morphed into a massive all-city pre-Christmas fest. Here, the locals are making the cornmeal flatbread for txistorra (sausages).
The stars of the festival are Basque cider, and txistorra (Basque sausages) wrapped in handmade cornmeal flatbreads.
After enjoying the festival, and sampling all the Basque food, we headed off for a pintxo crawl lunch through Old Town. First stop!
Txistorra! And Spanish wine! Lunch is served at one of San Sebastian's many pintxo bars.
La Cepa was one of our favorite pintxo bars.
At La Cepa, we had pintxos with eggs with Basque ham, croquettes, Basque cheese, and an astoundingly good ham-whipped cheese pintxo.