Please sign in to post.
Holiday Sale! Save 20% Storewide!

A week between visits to Bordeaux and Barcelona: What route to take?

Posted by on

Hello all,

I am planning a visit to Europe starting the second week of October, flying into Barcelona, there only briefly, followed by four weeks in France, then back to Barcelona. By train, I am making a counterclockwise loop: up to Strasbourg (via Montpellier, Lyon, and Dijon) then over to Nantes (via Paris - short stop there) and down to Bordeaux.

I finish Bordeaux on Nov 8 and would like to be back in Barcelona around Nov 15. I may want to visit some people in Madrid; if so, I'll spend most of that "gap" week there. But if that visit isn't going to happen, I'd like to spend the time elsewhere (I've already visited Madrid - and Paris - multiple times on past travels.)

So, should my trip from Bordeaux go ...

  • Via Toulouse, with a stop in a smaller Southern (France) town along the way (which one?)
  • Via a coastal French town, then to San Sebastian then to Barcelona
  • Via San Sebastian or Bilbao then Pamplona (or?) then to Barcelona

I may hear tomorrow from the folks in Madrid - or in a month. In the meantime I'd like to know more about my other options.

Thank you.

Posted by
319 posts

All three of your options offer wonderful scenery and experiences, and truthfully, you would not go wrong with any of the three you mentioned. However, if you have not been to San Sebastian, I'd take one of those routes. If you are driving (though it would also work with the trains, too), you could stop by a number of Basque country towns (Biarritz, Bayonne, St. Jean de Luz in France. Pamplona, Bilboa in Spain). With 7 nights, I'd spend a couple nights in either Biarritz, Bayonne or St. Jean de Luz then visit the other 2 towns you are not staying in (these towns are about 20 mins apart.) Then I'd spend 2 to 3 nights in San Sebastian. You could head to Pamplona (about 1-1.5 hours East of San Sebastian) and spend a night or two there before you head to Barcelona.

This topic has been automatically closed due to a period of inactivity.