Basque Country, Spain

A tour through País Vasco 

(Basque Country, northern Spain)

One 12 hour road trip spanning the entire length of Spain.
 (It's kind of cool to say I drove from the southernmost tip of Spain to the northern coast.)

4 days to explore as much of Basque Country as we could. 

1 local friend to show us around his hometown and local haunts.
(You can click on the pictures to make them full-sized.)

 Lekeitio: a small fishing village on the coast, and our home base for the weekend. It was fun getting to be part of the local culture, especially one so different from that of Andalucía.

Asking for the return of exiled Basque prisoners - written in Euskara, the native language.

Athletic Club Bilbao's training center: Somewhere outside of Bilbao. It is completely open to visitors, so we spent an hour watching them train and feeling like paparazzi. The players in the picture are all players on the National Team. If I were a true fútbol fan I would know their names. But I'm not.

 

Bilbao: Spent an afternoon eating pintxos and exploring the streets. Pintxos are basically the north of Spain's take on tapas. Instead of ordering them, all the pintxos are laid out on the bar, and you can pick and choose at your leisure. When you're done, you pay based on the honor system.

 

Anti-bullfighting ad - "put yourself in its place."



San Sebastian: A picture-perfect seaside town, with a noticeable Parisian feeling. We ate more pintxos and explored more streets. And spent some time relaxing on the beach.
    

  

Since this post completely lacked my usual abundance of descriptions, here's a link to my fellow roadtripper's blog! Eli has an excellent summary of our weekend, as well as interesting tidbits about the region. Go check her out! 

Also, check out christineinspain.com. I've followed this blog religiously ever since I first found her slightly favorable take on Algeciras, and now she just so happens to be a great real life friend :) 

Click here for beautiful pictures of Basque Country, and a couple reasons why you should probably add it to your itinerary.