Beautiful drive from San Sebastian to Bilbao

Txakoli vineyard in mountains above San Sebastian

We drove to Bilbao today for an early morning flight home tomorrow.  Bilbao has an international airport, which San Sebastian does not.  Our hotel is right across the street from the sensational Guggenheim Museum, which has given Bilbao international cache and lots of tourists, something this mostly industrial city with lots of old world charm didn't have before.

First, a couple of photos of the museum.


main entrance to Guggenheim Museum

back side of Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum



Guggenheim Museum from river

The day started with a wonderful drive through the mountains and along the coast between San Sebastian and Bilbao. First was a tasting at a local winery located on top of a ridge and overlooking a valley full of vineyards.

The local wine is called txakoli (cha-ka-li, with the emphasis on the cha--Basque doesn't have a c, so the tx makes the ch sound we know).  It's a slightly spritzy white wine which you drink when it is very young, so it is kept in fermentation tanks for only 3 weeks before the process is stopped.  Then, it's ready for bottling.  It's a flavorful, tangy wine, very light and very popular in this region.  The owner has 2 daughters who are in the U.S. right now marketing the wine in New York and California.

Gail and Don with owner of Talai Berri Wiinery

Next was a stop in Gitari, a pretty little fishing village about 30 minutes away from San Sebastian, over a mountain road and down to a bay filled with fishing boats.  This village has 2000 residents and has become quite popular with Spanish tourists.  So, it has several nice shops selling local products--cheese, ham, all kinds of pickled vegetables and fish, spices and more.

uplifted shale cliffs near Gitari

Nearby is a very interesting area of uplifted slabs of shale that form big cliffs above the Atlantic.  You can see remnants of these slabs when the tide is low, as it was today when we were there.  On top of the cliff is a picturesque church that was used in a very popular Spanish movie, so now this area gets tourists from all over Spain who want to visit the church.

old church made famous by Spanish movie

We all know a little about Gernika because of Picasso's most famous painting, Guernica, showing the horror and anguish of the German bombing of the village of Gernika (at Franco's request) in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War.  Gernika has always been the place where local and regional nobles, and now, politicians, gather to vow their support for Basque laws and culture.  As a result, the Basque provinces have quite a lot of autonomy within Spain, with their own tax, legal and police systems.  Our guide, an ardent Basque nationalist, dreams of the day this area will be a separate country.  Other people we talked to, however, think it would be folly to break away from Spain.


Gernika's replica of Picasso's Guernica

This is the route we will take when we bring a group here next year--a memorable last day in northwestern Spain.