It was really nice not having to get up to an alarm this morning, pretty much the first time in 2 weeks. Got up, had a full breakfast at the IBIS, packed up and took my bags on the bus into town and left them at the new hotel. Went over to the covered market for a look see and a coffee and then did a bit of a walk around. Hotel graciously called when my room was ready, so headed back to check in and get situated. The IBIS rooms are perfectly fine, no muss, no fuss but having the hotel be over 1km from where the center of things is doesn’t really work particularly when I like to stop back at my room a few times during the day. I will say the bus service here is excellent and the same Transit app I use in SF, Seattle and Hawaii works to predict arrival times here. Last night I did a sort of tapa crawl. Ham and cheese board at first place, then walked around and had a Chistorra sausage and some Padron peppers at another place, but that was about it for me. I’m generally eating a bigger meal at lunch and not a big meal for dinner. Did some reasearch and planning to do a little bit of a round robin on transit tomorrow. Start with a bus ride to St. Jean de Luz about 40 minutes, will explore there, then ride over to Biarritz, have a look around there, and then bus back to Bayonne. All covered by a day pass costing under 4 euros. Found out as I was walking out this afternoon that a number of people are assembling for a Rick Steves Basque Country tour. Would be fun if Rick turned up! I will say that he is good at picking well located hotels so that tour members can walk around and be in the center of things. Today was hot again, so had to hide out in the, fortunately, working A/C at the hotel. My room thermostat was locked at 24c/75F, which the desk clerk informed me was the official temperature at which people will not get sick from the A/C being too cold… who knew? She unlocked it for me because she new Americans tolerate colder temperatures. Went to a ham producer tasting this afternoon that was a 45 minute tour. But mainly consisted of descriptions of the ham being rubbed with salt and taken up and down the stairs. Spoken in very rapid French and not very interesting.