Cheerios & Milk: All Roads Lead to Jesus...

...if you know where you're going! This seemed to be a theme for mine and Kelly's trip to San Sebastian last weekend. The locals are friendly...if you know their language (or any language other than English I assume). Eating tapas is fun...if you knew what you were eating. It's fun to try the "local" places...if you like locals glaring at you openly. Ok, really...I did have a fantastic time and San Sebastian is the cutest city, right out of a picture book! It really has it all; sandy beaches, picturesque city, fun nightlife...which is why we were surprised more English people haven't yet discovered it. I guess that is for the better since as soon as they do it will probably lose some of it's quaint charm and become a tourist haven with the promenade lined with cheesy tourist stalls selling hokey souvenirs rather than cute park benches with old couples eating ice cream.

So back to Jesus, the town of San Sebastian is set in a bay and at the tip of the bay there is a big (bigger than you think) "hill" with a huge statue of Jesus looking down over the town. Now it would have been appropriate for me to probably do some research as to the history of said Jesus, but I'll just take a wild guess and assume he was put there to look over the city in some time of need. Well, a friend of mine who had been to San Sebastian before had told me that you can climb the hill and go up to the Jesus and there is a great view of the city below. He assured me it is an easy walk and worth the time so Kelly and I decided it was a must on our trip. This brings me to my alternate title for this posting "How do you get to Jesus...." this was the question I posed someone the night before. His response "Pray."

So Saturday afternoon, after napping off the night before on the beach we decided it was time to be productive and take a look around the city and head to up to Jesus. We figure it can't be too hard we'll just walk towards it and surely there will be a marked path or something. Sure enough we get to the end of the bay and there is a gated road that leads up the hill with some sort of Park map so we head in. I must mention that in the half hour it takes us to get from the beach to the hill the weather has taken a drastic change...overcast, windy..foreboding if you will. I guess this has driven many of others who would normally be exploring this park out of the park, but not us. We are determined to get to Jesus. As we begin our walk we pass a man peeing on the side of the road...we turn around (to make sure he's not following us once we pass him, of course) and see him sitting in the same spot he just pee'd in, meditating. Interesting. So we carry on, we round a corner and see that the grade in this hill goes from an easy stroll to some serious leg burning action. We carry on. Only as we climb higher and higher do we realize we haven't seen anyone in a long time and we are pretty high up. Trapped, if say a peeing, meditating bad man jumps out of the lush bushes that surround either side of the road. We continue on. Then there is a fork in the road, to which i reply, "All roads lead to Jesus" ...well our road lead to a cemetery. We contemplate going back and trying the other road and in jest we yell out "God, lead us to Jesus" then, right at that very moment there is the first booming clap of thunder. I kid you not. We decide it is time to skedaddle.

Here are some of my favorite pics from the trip. I will have the rest on my shutterfly site soon, lwaterfield.shutterfly.com

view from the beach