Northern Spain

When is your business trip?
How much time do you have?
Any specific interests?

We have the last two weeks of June after my business just to enjoy . We love food and art. I have a twenty year old and eleven year old

Not knowing where you’re flying out of, I’ll say go north toward Santiago. West of Santiago is Muxia that is nice for a visit. If you want beaches, then they are all along to north coast in the area of Ribadeo. Just west of there is cathedral beach. If you can get there at low tide, you can walk on the beach under the rock arches. There are a number of small towns worth visiting, but only you know what you like to see. Once to get a rough itinerary, you can research some. Santillana Del Mar is nice, but touristy. Leon and Burgos are nice. There are a number of castles in those areas. In Santiago, the cathedral is under renovation, so there will be some scaffolding around.

Vigo itself is, unfortunately, not the most interesting town in Galicia--not a bad place, just with only a really tiny historic district. Down in that area Pontevedra, Cambados and Combarra are worth visiting. The small town of Tui, across the river from Portugal, is worth a couple of hours of slow wandering; you can rent an English-language audio guide at the cathedral. It's possible you could squeeze in visits to one or two of those places during your work period. Santiago de Compostela has a large historic area and needs more time.

In northern Galicia I liked A Coruna and Betanzos. Betanzos in particular seemed to have few foreign tourists.

You've been given good suggestions for the areas east of Galicia. I'll just note that I especially enjoyed Bilbao for its large historic area as well as the art. And the mountain area of the Picos de Europa is lovely. The old stone town of Potes is very atmospheric. There are active-sport opportunities in that area, but you may be a bit early for those. At least sone of the (very limited) public bus service in the area doesn't start until late June or early July.

One thing to keep in mind is that the weather along the western and northern coasts of Spain is not what we usually think of as "summer in Spain", which can be miserably hot elsewhere. You have to get a bit inland to pretty much avoid the chance of cool/cloudy/damp weather. Leon is likely to be hot, the coastal towns not so much. I would try to avoid counting on swimming on any particular day (unless you have wetsuits), but rather be prepared to seize the opportunity when it presents itself. I've found coastal weather forecasts to be pretty accurate with respect to temperature, but precipitation and cloud cover are evidently harder to predict.

There are islands off of Vigo, the Cies. It's a short ferry trip from Vigo - maybe 30 mins. Beautiful beaches, hiking. The water might be chilly -- I was there a few years ago around the same time. I was able to bathe - I'm a New Englander. There are showers, restaurants. We also took a day trip to Valenca, Portugal - just over the border from Tui. Another day trip we took from Vigo was to Ourense and Pontevedra. Ourense had a really great festival going on - but I don't know the name of it. When we go again, I'd love to see the Catedral beach.