Basque Country Itinerary: 10 Days from Bilbao to San Sebastián

Ten days in the Spanish Basque Country works most easily from two bases, Bilbao and San Sebastián, with a hire car for three of those days rather than all ten. That split is the whole trick of this trip: the two cities are walkable and well connected by bus, while the painted forest, the salt valley and the coastal towns need wheels. Hiring a car twice for a day or two costs less than parking one for a week and never touching it.

This is the trip I took through Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, written up properly. The original write-ups were some of the first things I published, short and chronological, and this version gathers them into an itinerary with the practical detail they were missing. Two things have changed a great deal since: the Oma painted forest has moved and now needs a booking, and the airport bus costs several times what it did. Both are covered below.

The 10-day route at a glance

The ten days are set out below, with the base you sleep in and whether that day needs a car.

We flew into Bilbao rather than driving down from Belgium, because two days of driving each way would have eaten the holiday and because a car parked outside a city hotel for a week is a cost with no benefit. Compare flights into Bilbao against Biarritz and Santander before you fix the dates, since all three put you inside the region.

Getting from Bilbao airport into the city

The Bizkaibus A3247 runs between Bilbao airport and Bilbao Intermodal bus station in about 20 minutes, calling at Alameda Rekalde and Gran Vía on the way in. It runs roughly every 15 minutes through the day.

The fare has moved a long way. We paid €1.45 in 2012. The single fare bought from the driver is now commonly quoted at around €4.50 (about $5, £4), and travelling on a Barik travel card brings it down to roughly the €1.19 zone fare, so the card pays for itself quickly if you are using buses and the metro anyway. Any figure from an older guide will be too low.

Day 1: Bilbao Old Town and the riverside

Day 1 is a walking day, and the Old Town plus the river gets you a surprising amount of Bilbao in an afternoon. Bilbao’s Casco Viejo is a grid of narrow streets on the right bank, and the natural place to stop in it is Plaza Nueva, an arcaded square ringed with bars.

We arrived, dropped bags at the hotel and went straight out with a paper guide, half following its walking route to make sure we passed things worth passing. Plan around the siesta: from roughly 2pm to between 4.30pm and 5pm most shops close, so use that window for a drink and pintxos rather than for shopping.

What a pintxo is, and how paying works

A pintxo is a small plate of food served on the bar counter in northern Spain, and it is not a tapa. Pintxos are paid for, where a tapa often comes free with a drink in the south, and they are more constructed: a slice of tortilla on bread, a skewer of anchovy and pepper, something with a cocktail stick through it.

Payment runs on trust. The pintxos sit out on the counter, you take one when you order a drink, and when you leave you tell the bartender how many you had. They believe you. They are also counting.

Two habits are worth copying. Locals rarely eat more than one or two in a bar before moving to the next, so a pintxo evening is a crawl rather than a meal. And the bar next to a famous museum will charge what a bar next to a famous museum charges: the priciest pintxo of our whole trip was the one we bought beside the Guggenheim. Our prices are from 2012 and have risen since, so treat any figure you read in an old guide as a floor rather than a price.

After the pintxos we walked the riverside. There is a wide pedestrian boulevard along the Old Town side of the estuary, separated from the traffic, and it gives you the Guggenheim from across the water. We passed the funicular up to Artxanda, which was closed for maintenance the week we were there, then crossed back at the Puente de Deusto into the newer half of the city.

Day 2: the Oma Forest, Bermeo and Plentzia

The Oma Forest now has to be booked in advance, even if you are visiting on your own. This is the single biggest change to this itinerary and the thing an older guide will get wrong. The Provincial Council of Bizkaia, which runs the site, states that you can visit alone at any time provided you book ahead, and that guided tours run on specific dates only. Bookings go through the Oma Forest and Santimamiñe visitors’ centre on 94 465 16 57 or at oma@bizkaia.eus, and there is an official Oma Forest app for the visit itself. Details are on the Oma Forest site.

The forest also moved. Agustín Ibarrola, who was born in Bilbao in 1930 and died in 2023, painted the original stand of Monterey pines at Kortezubi in 1984. An outbreak of the brown band fungus killed trees, several came down and the site was closed on safety grounds in 2018. The work was re-created at a new site nearby, still in Kortezubi inside the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, and paintings lost with the fallen trees were restored in the process. If you are following directions that tell you to park at the Lezika restaurant and walk an hour uphill to an unmarked trail, those directions are for the forest that closed.

What the work is has not changed. Ibarrola painted across the trunks of standing pines so that, from one particular position, marks spread over many separate trees line up into a single image. Numbered markers show you where to stand and which way to look. It belongs to the Art and Nature movement of the late 1960s, and it borrows the technique of Palaeolithic rock painting: the forest is both the canvas and the subject.

Go slowly and do not treat the numbers as a checklist. What you see shifts with every step, and two people standing a metre apart are not looking at the same picture. That is the point of it.

Other things sit close enough to make a day: the Santimamiñe caves, the Basondo wildlife shelter, the Urdaibai Bird Centre, and the Assembly House and Peace Museum in Gernika.

Bermeo and Plentzia

Bermeo is a working fishing port and the right place for lunch after the forest. We parked free near the harbour and the tourist office, walked the quay and the pier, and ate pintxos on a terrace looking at the boats.

Plentzia was our last stop and I have to be honest about it: by then my legs had gone and the town has left almost no trace in my memory. Go and form your own opinion.

Day 3: Vitoria-Gasteiz, the Añana salt valley and Getxo

Day 3 runs inland to the Basque capital and back to the coast, and it is the longest driving day of the ten. Vitoria-Gasteiz has a compact medieval centre that takes a couple of hours on foot, and Calle Cuchillería is the street to eat on: one narrow lane, restaurants and bars down both sides.

From Vitoria we drove to the Valle Salado de Añana, the terraced salt valley. Our plan was to visit, and when we got there and could see the salt pans from the roadside we changed our minds, because you cannot go in without joining a guided tour and we did not want an hour on salt production. That is a matter of taste rather than a warning. The salt works are more than a thousand years old and the guided visit is the only way to walk the terraces, so decide before you drive out there rather than in the car park. Tour times and prices are on the Valle Salado site.

Getxo was the day’s surprise and the stop I would keep. A seafront promenade runs the length of the town, from the Bizkaia transporter bridge that carries people across the estuary to Portugalete, down to the old harbour. The old harbour fills up at night: people take drinks from the bars and sit on the steps over the water. Climb the steps from there and you are in the small town centre, which is at its liveliest in the evening when everybody eats outside.

Day 4: Portugalete, and a slow day in Bilbao

Portugalete is a 40-minute metro ride from Bilbao and does not need a car, which is the main thing in its favour. We had seen it across the water from Getxo and wanted a closer look. There is a waterfront to walk and not a great deal else, and Getxo does the same thing better. If your ten days are tight, this is the day to cut.

What saved the day was Bilbao itself. Walking the city without a plan, stopping for pintxos, sitting down, is a perfectly good use of a day in a city this size, and it is the day I would keep.

Day 5: the Guggenheim Bilbao, then the bus to San Sebastián

The Guggenheim is worth the ticket for the building, and you should manage your expectations about the inside. The outside is the thing: titanium curves that change colour with the weather and the hour, and Jeff Koons’s flower Puppy standing in front of it. We spent about an hour and a half in the galleries and there was a David Hockney exhibition on while we were there, which was luck rather than planning. The interior is calmer and more conventional than the shell suggests, so if you were hoping the inside would be as strange as the outside, it is not.

If you intend to use the audio guide properly, budget roughly double the time we spent. Check current hours and prices on the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao site before you go, since they change by season and the museum closes some Mondays.

Address: Avenida Abandoibarra 2, 48009 Bilbao.

Just outside there is an open-air pintxo bar with a terrace and, when we were there, a jazz band. The setting is good and you pay for it.

We took the bus from Bilbao to San Sebastián afterwards. Buses run frequently, the journey is a little over an hour, and it costs a fraction of hiring a car for days when you will not use one. Compare bus and train fares between Bilbao and San Sebastián rather than assuming the train is quicker, because on this route it usually is not.

In San Sebastián we stayed in the Old Town and walked out the same evening: through the newer half of the city, over the Puente María Cristina, then along the Paseo de Francia to Playa de la Zurriola, which is where the surfers are.

One piece of advice from ten days of eating there: eat outside the Old Town. We ate in the Parte Vieja almost every night because that is where we slept, and the food was consistently worse and dearer than in the new town a few streets away. The one pizza place we tried, on Calle San Vicente, forgot our order and served a pizza I would not go back for.

Day 6: a beach day at La Concha

Day 6 is the day to do nothing, and Basque weather will tell you which day that is. The coast here swings between hot sun and grey rain inside 24 hours: we had 33°C (91°F) one day and under 20°C (68°F) with rain the next.

When the sun came out we went to Playa de la Concha rather than Zurriola. Zurriola gets the surf and the crowd that comes with it; La Concha is the wide shell-shaped bay in front of the city, busy but big enough that you can still put a towel down.

Day 7: four towns in one day

Day 7 needs the second hire car, and the four towns run west to east along the coast from San Sebastián. Hiring a car for a single day here is what makes the coastal towns possible without committing to one for the whole trip; compare one-day rates for a San Sebastián pick-up rather than extending an earlier booking, because short local hires are often cheaper than long ones.

Tolosa

Tolosa has a small historic centre that is pleasant to walk and does not hold you long. An hour covered it for us and we drove on.

Hondarribia

Hondarribia is the stop to give time to, and it is the pick of the four. The town has a harbour, a long seafront and a walled old quarter on the hill above, reached by steps or by a public lift. At the top, Plaza de Armas is the square to sit in: the Parador de Hondarribia occupies the old castle on it, and the view runs out over the bay to France.

We had lunch on the terrace of one of the small bars on that square. The paella was made from scratch and took a long time to arrive, and neither of those facts was a complaint on a sunny afternoon at that height above the water.

Zarautz

Zarautz is the surfing town of the Basque coast and it did not hold us. The long beach is genuinely good and the town behind it reminded us more of the built-up resorts of the Costa Blanca than of anywhere else we saw on this trip. If you surf, this is your stop. If you do not, drive on.

Zumaia

Zumaia is the finer beach town and the locals think so too, judging by how hard the parking was. I came for one thing: the flysch. A flysch is a sequence of tilted rock layers, laid down on an ancient sea floor and now standing on end, running out of the cliffs and across the beach like a stone pier. The formation runs along the coast from Zumaia to Deba and it is one of the most complete sequences of its kind anywhere.

I would have stayed longer. We had a car to return and a passenger who had run out of afternoon, so we drove back to San Sebastián and finished at the Parque del Palacio de Aiete, a hillside park far enough from the centre that it is awkward on foot and easy with a car. The palace had closed by the time we arrived. The grounds had not.

Day 8: the San Sebastián Aquarium

The aquarium is more museum than aquarium, and that is why it is better than it sounds. San Sebastián’s aquarium opened in 1928 and was rebuilt in 1998, which tripled its exhibition space.

The visit runs in four parts, in this order.

1. Model ships: a collection of detailed models and replicas.
2. Maritime history: the city’s rowing competitions and its whaling past.
3. Natural history: shells and the skeletons of sea animals.
4. The tanks: the aquarium proper, including spherical tanks that let you see small animals in close detail, and a walk-through tunnel under a large tank of sharks, sea turtles and giant eels.

By the time you reach part four you will assume the tanks are an afterthought. They are not, and the shark tunnel is the high point of the building.

Day 9: El Peine del Viento and Monte Urgull

Day 9 pairs San Sebastián’s famous sculpture with its fortified hill, and both are free.

El Peine del Viento

El Peine del Viento, the Wind Comb, sits at the far western end of La Concha bay where the promenade runs out against the rock at the foot of Monte Igueldo. It is the work of the sculptor Eduardo Chillida with the architect Luis Peña Ganchegui, installed in 1977: three steel forms of roughly ten tonnes each, anchored into the rocks, standing on a pink granite terrace that Peña Ganchegui built as a small amphitheatre.

The terrace is part of the sculpture. Grilles set into the stone open onto the sea beneath, so at high tide water spouts up through them and in calm weather you feel air pushed up instead. Stand on them.

Walk out from the Old Town along the promenade and it takes about 45 minutes. It was raining and under 20°C (68°F) the day we went, which is exactly the weather the sculpture was built for. The name is often written Peine de los Vientos; the work is Peine del Viento.

Monte Urgull

Monte Urgull rises straight out of the Old Town and you can be on the path within five minutes of the Parte Vieja. There are two entrances: one behind the aquarium on the harbour side, and one to the right of the Museo San Telmo. Paths loop up past old gun batteries, viewpoints and the castle of La Mota, and you can walk all the way to the statue of Christ on the summit.

Some sections are steep, but they are maintained and there is no exposure as long as you stay on the path.

Halfway up, the main path passes a small free museum on the history of San Sebastián. Go in. It is not large, and it holds scale models, objects and two short films, one built from archive footage of the city as it was and one of the city as it is now.

Day 10: Monte Igueldo

Monte Igueldo has a funicular and a small old-fashioned amusement park at the top, and it is the right last morning of this trip. The funicular climbs from the western end of La Concha, and what waits at the top is a fairground that has been there long enough to feel like a period piece rather than an attraction. We rode one of the rides and then walked round for the view, which is the real reason to go up: the whole shell of the bay, the city, and the coast running east.

Where we stayed

We based ourselves in one hotel in Bilbao and one pension in San Sebastián, and the brief was a clean room within walking distance of what we wanted to see, under €100 a night for two, breakfast not included. Skipping breakfast is worth doing here: paying €5 a head for toast and a croissant is poor value in a city where the bar on the corner does it better.

Compare rooms and filter by district when you look for a hotel in Spain. In Bilbao, stay in the Ensanche if you want shops and the bus station, or the Casco Viejo if you want the bars. In San Sebastián, the Parte Vieja puts you in the middle of the pintxo bars and also in the middle of the noise, so the new town is the better choice if you sleep lightly.

Bilbao: Ibis Bilbao Centro

We originally booked a different hotel, read enough poor accounts of it afterwards to change our minds, cancelled free of charge inside the 48-hour window and moved to the Ibis Bilbao Centro instead. That is a useful thing to know in itself: a flexible rate lets you change your mind after you have done the research you should have done first.

The Ibis is in the newer part of Bilbao, near the shops and a 15-minute walk from the Termibus station. Check-in and check-out were quick, the staff were friendly, and the room was clean and plain: a double bed, a television, a small wardrobe, a modern private bathroom. There was no fridge and no toiletries; soap is sold at reception.

The thing that made it worth the price was the underground car park at €10 a day, against roughly €22 a day for public parking in central Bilbao, where finding a space is a problem in its own right.

Address: Calle General Concha 28, 48010 Bilbao.

San Sebastián: Pensión Basic Confort 2

The Basic Confort 2 is on the second floor of a four-storey building in the Old Town, in the pedestrian zone, with four rooms and a reception desk in what would otherwise be the hall. Note the number: there is also a Basic Confort without the 2, elsewhere in San Sebastián.

It was the better of our two stays. The owner met us with a map and marked what to see on it. The room was large and recently redone, with two single beds pushed together, a small balcony, a desk, a big wardrobe, a television, and separate toilet and shower. Someone is at reception from 9am to 9pm; outside those hours there is a phone number and a sister pension nearby.

Two things to plan for. You cannot walk in the way you can at a hotel: between 9 and 9 you ring the bell, and after 9pm you call. Look up the address and number of the sister pension before you travel, so a flat phone battery is not a problem. And the walls are thin and the street is noisy. We had a room at the back and I sleep in earplugs; my boyfriend, who refuses to wear them, noticed both.

She gave us biscuits when we left, and let us use her computer and printer to check in online for the flight home.

Address: Calle San Lorenzo 12, 2º Izda, 20003 Donostia-San Sebastián.

Do not forget travel insurance

Travel insurance covers the part of a trip you cannot plan: a cancellation, an injury abroad, sometimes stolen or broken electronics. I carry ongoing cover for every trip, and a per-trip policy does the same job if you travel a few times a year. Check out SafetyWing if you have none. Their plans can be started after you have already left, they were the first travel insurer to cover COVID, and when I caught it they reimbursed my costs without an argument.

Frequently asked questions

How many days do you need in the Spanish Basque Country?

Ten days covers Bilbao, San Sebastián and the Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa coast without rushing. Seven days works if you drop Portugalete, Tolosa and Zarautz. Five days is enough for the two cities and one driving day.

Do you need a car in the Basque Country?

Not for the whole trip. Bilbao and San Sebastián are walkable and linked by frequent buses, so hire a car only for the days that leave the cities: the Oma Forest, the inland run to Vitoria-Gasteiz and the coastal towns. Three hire days out of ten covered everything we wanted.

Is Bilbao or San Sebastián the better base?

Use both. Bilbao is the better base for Urdaibai, Gernika, Vitoria-Gasteiz and the Añana salt valley, and San Sebastián is the better base for Hondarribia, Zumaia and the French border. Splitting the ten days between them removes two hours of driving a day.

When is the best time to visit the Basque Country?

Late spring and early autumn give the most usable weather. This coast is green because it rains, and it rains in every month, so pack for both ends of the range: we had 33°C (91°F) and under 20°C (68°F) with rain inside the same week.

Do you have to book the Oma Forest?

Yes. The Provincial Council of Bizkaia requires a booking for both self-guided and guided visits, on 94 465 16 57 or at oma@bizkaia.eus. Guided tours run on set dates only.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

Five things from this trip and from checking it again would change how we planned it.

1. Book the Oma Forest before you leave home. Turning up is no longer possible: a booking is required even to walk in on your own, and the forest is not on the site the older directions point to.
2. Hire the car in blocks, not for the trip. We took one for two days from Bilbao and one for a day from San Sebastián, and paid nothing for the six days we were in cities. Central Bilbao parking runs around €22 a day.
3. Book a hotel with free cancellation and finish your research afterwards. We only avoided a bad hotel in Bilbao because the rate let us cancel free up to 48 hours before arrival.
4. Eat outside the Parte Vieja in San Sebastián. We ate in the Old Town almost every night because we slept there, and the food was worse and dearer than in the new town a few streets away.
5. Take earplugs to a small Basque pension. The Basic Confort 2 was the better of our two stays and the walls are thin. I slept through everything and my boyfriend, who will not wear them, did not.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the first-hand notes in this post come from her 10-day trip through Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, based in Bilbao and San Sebastián. The team covers Spain for independent travellers, including the car hire, hotels, pintxo bars and coastal day trips worth booking, and updates this page when prices, opening hours and access rules change.