SAN SEBASTIÁN

La Concha faces north, into the Bay of Biscay, which is why the sky here is so often a warm oyster white rather than blue and why the sun sets into the sea instead of behind the hills. The water is plankton-rich and opaque, a cool green-teal that never reads as Mediterranean. The hills are wet Atlantic forest, dark almost to black, running green all the way down to the waterline.

The railing along the promenade was installed in 1910: 1,355 pieces of white ironwork, each a circle within a circle ringed by bay leaves. Local lore says every flower faces the city except one, which faces the sea. Nobody agrees which.

It runs the length of the bay and it runs the width of this towel, because in San Sebastián you look at the water over ironwork or you are not really there.