Bilbao and San Sebastián

A relaxing weekend in the Basque Country

By Michael Wilson

May 25^th, 2017

Guggenheim Museum

The main thing you read when researching Bilbao is the architecture of the Guggenheim museum and the awesome sculptures surrounding it. Luckily our hotel was a short walk from the museum so after chomping down some Pintxos for breakfast we headed straight for the museum.

Sadly, one of the iconic structures, The Puppy, was being worked on and so we couldn't see it. This didn't matter too much though because the museum was more than enough. Looking like some sort of warped ship, it glistened in the sunlight.

There's also the creepy Maman spider sculpture, overlooking the river. The whole area is fascinating and I could have spent the whole weekend there taking photos from all perspectives.

A walk along the river

After the Guggenheim, we took a stroll along the river on the hunt for our second instalment of Pintxos. There's quite a few nice looking bridges along the river in Bilbao and a huge variety of interesting facades to take in.

The whole area is also brilliantly peaceful. There were no crowds of people and the people who were around were in no hurry to get anywhere.

Time for Pintxos!

The culture in the Basque country sat really well with us. Every bar in Bilbao has tapas style foods (pintxos) placed on the bar, with the locals ordering a beer and a pintxos before moving on and carrying on with their day. Every pintxos is either served on bread or comes with bread so they end up being quite filling. There's so much to choose from it's difficult to leave!

We stumbled upon Erribera Merkatua, which is an indoor market with loads of places on offer. It looked like heaven with all the food on display!

Finding San Mames stadium

I'm a big football fan and I've made a mission of visiting as many football stadiums as I can during my city breaks. Sadly, Athletic Bilbao were playing in Madrid on the weekend we visited so we couldn't see a game but we wanted to visit the impressive stadium anyway.

The stadium is really modern and looks great from the outside. It also has a bar, which is open every day with great views of the pitch, so of course we took this opportunity for another beer (and pintxos), to take in the view.

Quick hike before the coach

The next morning we got up early and headed to the station to catch a coach to San Sebastián. We hadn't banked on the coaches being sold out though. The first coach which had space for us was at 2pm, which meant we had four hours to kill beforehand.

Bilbao sits in a valley surrounded by hills and mountains so we used the time to climb one of them and take in the views from above the city.

San Sebastián

It was finally time for our coach so off we went on our way through the valleys and the mountains to San Sebastián. It certainly helped that the weather was glorious when we arrived but I couldn't help but smile at how beautiful the area was.

It's a seaside town so we planned on walking along the coast but not before a beer and a pintxos to keep us going ;-)

There's a Jesus on top of a hill, over looking the city, so of course we climbed up that hill to take in the view the big man had of San Sebastián. It was warm and climbing up a hill was the last thing I wanted to be doing in the heat but the view was well worth it.

We stayed to watch the sun set and were greeted with some beautiful skies.

One more climb before heading home

We had one more day in Bilbao which we used to take in another view from the top of a mountain. This time we took the Artxanda funicular up to save us some effort :-)

This mountain was higher than anything else we'd been up in Bilbao and the views were certainly the best. Luckily there was a bar at the top so we managed to squeeze in some more beer and pintxos before making our way to the airport.

If you like good food and plentiful drink then Bilbao or San Sebastián is a place to explore. The lifestyle of beer and pintxos is something I fell in love with pretty quickly. Of course there's also lots of nice buildings to take in and some great hikes if that's your thing but I'd have to say the amazing food is the biggest draw to the region.