Looking for feedback/suggestions on road trip intinerary in the Basque Country

The drive to Hernani is roughly five hours. If I was making that drive all in one day I’d stop in Burgos since it’s about halfway to your destination. I also found it more interesting than Pamplona although the drive time if stopping in Pamplona is about the same.

Since you want to visit Vitoria-Gasteiz, cut a night from someplace and spend a night there en route to Hernani since you need to pass by it anyway. In the morning you could visit Pamplona en route to Hernani.

You seem to be spending a lot of time between Bilbao, Hernani, and San Sebastián and they aren’t that far apart. Once you figure out what and where you want to visit you might want to redistribute your nights. Use your time traveling between places to stop and see other locations. It breaks up the drive and it might help by not having to backtrack to places you already passed by.

I wouldn’t want to drive two plus hours to reach the airport on departure day. Too many things could go wrong.

Pick up some cookies at Kuki Cookie Bakery from our friends in Bilbao for your stay or road trip! Sounds like a great trip. Happy travels!

Thank you jamieelsabio.

This is the type of advice we are looking for. The original thought was split
between SS and Bilbao as home base and then travel. I have been looking at maps that show the
different towns and reading this forum. We chose Hernani instead of staying in SS both because
we will have parking and it was suggested to look at smaller places close to SS. I am a bit geographically
challenged so maybe not mapping out the most efficient way to visit places. That is one of my reasons
for sharing initial itinerary.

I hear you about the drive to the airport. Sounds like we should head back to stay in Madrid the night before.

We should be able to either shift our Hernani nights to either Sun - Mon, so just 2 nights and stay Sat in
Vitoria-Gasteiz for a night or keep 3 nights in Hernani. With a car we can make some more spontaneous
decisions and open to suggestions as they arise but certainly do not want to back track if not needed.

The places we definitely want to see are:
San Sebastian
Hondarribia
Bilbao
Gernika
Vitoria-Gasteiz
Longrono?

But open to others although we think day trips make sense and not switching accommodations too often.

Hi Gloria,

a suggestion might be to take a bus from Madrid to Logroño. Night in Logroño. Then you could pick up a car and drive to Vitoria and then up to Hernani. There are others who can give you a good itinerary for a few days in the Basque country. After leaving Bilbao, head to Burgos. The cathedral is incredible, and the Cartuja is a gem. In Burgos you can leave the car, and take the bus from Burgos directly to the T4 terminal. There are many buses daily.

Personally I'd skipped Pamplona, unless you are a Hemingway fan. It is just a bit too out of the way to be worth the time it will take.
Also if you go from Vitoria to Hernani, you can stop in Idiazabal, where they have a centro de inerpretacion for the Idiazabal cheese.

Finally, you don't say when you are going. Just be ware that on August 12th there is a full eclipse that will go over Bilbao and Burgos, and accomadations are filling up fast.

dlinstrom,

Sorry, I probably had my dates in a much earlier thread. Nice to know about the eclipse. We are traveling at the end of March into early April - another very busy time I am told. We have a wedding in Toledo between 3/25-3/26 and then the extended family will all move to Madrid on 3/27 so that is why we begin and end in Madrid.

Appreciate the suggestion about skipping Pamplona and the alternative suggestions. My friend is set on having a car which I think would be good for traveling around the Basque area although I did mention the train/bus from Madrid to start out. I will share your suggestions but not confident she will go for it. :)

Gloria