Spanish breakfast before cooking class.

Cooking class on other side of bridge. Paella and burnt basque cheesecake with three grades of wine and a slurp of horrible cider. Class started 11 in the morning.

Excellent and very experienced chef led the class. All well explained. The class from start to finish, including eating was four hours.

Basically close to a NYC cheesecake- no crust.

“We” made two paellas from scratch. Stock for seafood version and stock for meat version. Then the roasting of parts and very slow cooking of rice. Final product: too salty for me and similarly for Sharon. Seafood paella was better than the meat.

Aprons still on.

Walked to old town in 32-33 degree heat. Had to stop to get water. Immediate dehydration.

Great bar there for pinxos but far too hot to eat, especially after the three wine and coffee cooking class ( we drank little-local wines too sweet and cider too sour).

Back at hotel instead of going for ice cream- shower needed!

Post nap, off to find Bar Artajo.

Bar was fairly quiet when we arrived and extremely busy when we left.

One of our favs. Not a regional speciality, more Barcelona but we found an excellent version.

Our favorite peppers de Padron are not Basque enough, apparently. The local peppers show up here as peppers de Guernika. Often they are served in the same way as Pedron but in the restaurant they happen to put them on the sandwich.

Capped the evening off with ice cream while a massive thunderstorm provided a lightening show. Went well with the mint chip.