Flight advice San Francisco to Barcelona and Basque Country

From Barcelona, there are direct flights to Bilbao. Flying takes about 2 hours, the train about 6 1/2. There are no direct flights from the Basque region to San Francisco or Oakland so going back to Barcelona might be your best bet. However, you might also check out returning from Madrid buying an open jaw ticket. Price of open jaw might be different than round trip from Barcelona. Until you plug in your dates, you won't know.

There seem to be only 3 trains a day from Barcelona to Bilbao; as already noted, some people would fly that route. Not knowing what day of the week you'd be traveling, I checked a weekday in April. Buses are substantially slower so not a good option for that leg of your trip.

ViaMichelin will help you estimate the cost of driving (aside from the car-rental fees themselves), and I would consider that option for the period after you leave Barcelona. The Basque countryside is really pretty, and you might enjoy the freedom offered by a car. On the other hand, I got around the Spanish Basque Country quite well by bus (mostly) and train last year. Bilbao-San Sebastian-Hondarribia have good bus service, and Vitoria-Gasteiz is also within easy reach. If you're thinking about the La Rioja wine country, that would be really tricky without a car.

I have never visited the French Basque Country, so I have no information about the state of public transportation in that area.

For researching flight options I like a search site like Google Flights. Fiddle around with the "Multi-City" selection to see what Bilbao and Madrid returns look like, as compared to the plain-vanilla RT to and from Barcelona. There are flights out of Bilbao that connect to overseas flights, but it appears that returning from Bilbao will almost certainly mean two connections and a total flight time of at least 18 hours. Total time to return to Barcelona or go to Madrid the day before your flight by train, plus the flight, might not be much worse and the cost could be substantially lower. Costs can vary a lot by date.

I see that trains back to Barcelona are very limited and there's a bit more service to Madrid, which at least on weekdays has a 9:30 AM departure from Bilbao, and going from Bilbao to Madrid is a bit quicker than going to Barcelona. So definitely price out both SFO-BCN-SFO and SFO-BCN/MAD-SFO as well as SFO-BCN/BIO-SFO.

Here's the Renfe website for checking train schedules. You can look at the schedules for March or early April since fall schedules aren't loaded yet.

Should you decide to rent a car for other purposes, that would be a viable way to get to either the Barcelona or the Madrid airport. Madrid seems to be about 2 hours closer by car.

When my parents lived in SFO, we would usually go Bilbao-London/Paris-SFO.

I will be doing the same trip from Oakland to Barcelona in Aug Sept 2017
Check Norweigian Air Shuttle direct from OAK to BCN. Really great prices if you are flexible on the dates. They only fly direct a few days a week. I will be flying back to BArcelona from Bilbao on the local airline Vuelling for 27 euros.

Liam
Marin

Barcelona has a new good looking airport and Verling appears to run the place so flying from Barcelona to Bilbao with Vueling should work nicely. Have you ever tried google.com/flights. I don't think there are any non stops between Bilbao and SFO, if you have the cash I would fly to FRA and home on the A380 with Luftansa for the best service.

The drive from Barcelona to the Basque through Spain is unexciting, I would rent a car spend a night at the Cardona Parador and drive into France and do Rick's Languedoc drive on my way to Biarritz if the car rental drop charge don't kill you. Good wine along the way in France.