We went to Basque Country in mid-November 2022 for a week-long trip, visiting Bilbao, San Sebastián and Pamplona. You can read about each stop by following the links below, see our full travel itinerary further down and I’ve also gathered some notes that apply more generally here, too.
Basque Country is located in the western Pyrenees, straddling the border between France and Spain on the coast of the Bay of Biscay (thanks Wikipedia). We only really visited a very small part but it was beautiful, filled with art and delicious food – I’d love to explore more!
All my notes are based around my experiences as a tourist in November 2022. Please do check any information if you’re planning your own trip – things change!
Contents
The main destinations we visited
Our full itinerary for Basque Country
Basque Country has popped into our consciousness a few times so when we realised we had a bit of a gap in our travelling in November we decided to go there. The combination of Joe Lycett and James Acaster’s delight in on a pintxos tour in Travel Man and Anthony Bourdain’s visit in Parts Unknown certainly contributed. So we did what we usually do when it comes to European destinations: ordered the Rick Steves’ guide (see it on Bookshop.org here* or on Amazon here*), looked at his recommendations and figured out what we’d like to see.
I think we’d originally planned to travel about a bit more and definitely to venture into the French Basque region but in the end we took things a bit more slowly and worked with the weather. Our itinerary is below, including our travel times, and you can click through each location to read all about what we did there:
Bilbao: 2 nights (1.5 days)
Bus to San Sebastián
San Sebastián: 4 nights (3/4 days)
Day trip to Pamplona (bus there and back from San Sebastián)
Bus to Bilbao
Bilbao: 1 night (1 afternoon and 1 morning)
Fly from Bilbao to Gatwick
General things I found useful to know when travelling on this trip
These are a few things I found useful, based on my experience on the trip detailed above. Things probably vary in different regions and at different times of year but I thought they might be helpful anyway!
Getting to and from Basque Country from the UK
We flew from Gatwick Airport to Bilbao – it was a very quick flight but I can’t recommend the airline we took as they cancelled our return flight without telling us in advance. Sometimes it’s better not to just go with the cheapest option.
The bus from Bilbao airport to the city centre is super easy too – the ticket desk is in Departures and the buses are frequent.
Getting around Basque Country from Bilbao
It’s really easy to get the bus to other cities. We bought tickets at the bus station just before travelling but one of the buses was sold out and we had to wait for the next one, so you might want to plan ahead if you’re on a tight schedule. All the bus stations we went to had lovely cafés and mini-markets so you can wait comfortably anyway.
Is it expensive?
For context we are a couple on middle-ish incomes living in the UK. We travel on what I’d call a mid-range budget and we spend enough to make sure we do everything we want to do and see everything we want to see within our means. We usually stay in hotels that are approx £50 – £100 per night with good reviews, eat in reasonably priced restaurants for dinner but also make supermarket lunches and breakfasts.
We wouldn’t have been able to afford to stay where we did in San Sebastián in the summer because the prices go up a huge amount. In November we got a great room in a gorgeous hotel for a good price. We’d probably have had to stay further out in the warmer months.
Basque country is an incredible place for eating and I’m sure you could spend a fortune on some of the best meals in the world. We found the cost of food and drink in the places we went to be more reasonable than in the UK. We ate amazing pintxos, tried plenty of fancy pastries, drank a range of beers and wine and also made great sandwiches and had yogurts and berries from really lovely supermarkets to keep the cost a bit lower and our intake a bit healthier.
Terminology: a few key words
I won’t provide a full list of translations as I’m not an expert in Spanish or Basque but there are a few words I’ll keep using throughout these blogs so I thought it might be helpful to explain them!
Donostia-San Sebastián: Donostia is the Basque name for San Sebastián and is what is written as the destination for the bus.
Pintxos: (pinchos) small snacks usually eaten in bars, often displayed on the counter for you to point at to order.
Txikiteo: the Basque word for hopping from bar to bar enjoying pintxos and drinks.
Kalimotxo: red wine and coke (surprisingly delicious!)
Txakoli: effervescent white wine
Vino tinto: red wine
ATMs / cash machines are not created equal
It’s worth checking what works best for you – we are Brits and were using a Chase card and the Santander ATM we tried first had a €7 fee for withdrawals whilst Deutsche Bank had no fee at all.
Where did Bourdain eat?
When we went to Vietnam I started Googling ‘Where did Anthony Bourdain eat in…’ and found some great meals as a result, so I did that here too. We struck gold using this method getting great recommendations for The Perfect Day in Bilbao and read his Field Notes on San Sebastián.
A fun street art collecting app
Flash Invaders is a fun app from street artist Invader – get points for finding pieces of his work. We used this map to look for some and it took us to new areas of the city as we played.
A loo finding app
Flush Toilet Finder app is very handy to have if you need to find the nearest loo!
We were in Basque Country in mid-November 2022 for a week-long trip, visiting Bilbao, San Sebastián and Pamplona, so all my notes are based around my experiences as a tourist at that time. Please do check any dates/opening times/locations etc. if you’re planning your own trip – things change! Links are to websites if I can find useful ones, or Google Maps locations if not, so you can see where they are. Please also note this post contains some affiliate links, indicated with a ‘*’ – if you click them and decide to buy something I may receive a small cut of the payment, but it won’t cost you more. Thank you!