My wife and I will be starting a three week driving tour of northern Spain by flying into Bilbao on September 29 2026, picking up our rental car at the airport and then driving on to Santander. Our itinerary will take us in a loop that will bring us back to Bilbao to fly home to Hawaii on October 20. We have booked hotels in Santander (3 nights), Santillana del Mar (2 nights), Llanes (3 nights), Oviedo (3 nights), León (3 nights), Burgos (3 nights), and back to Bilbao (4 nights). We are seasoned travels, comfortable driving in Europe and the UK and, though both in our 70s, have no mobility issues to slow us down. Our interests are with cathedrals, prehistoric caves, sculpture walks, museums, other cultural interests and, of course, the great food of the area. We plan to have one day in each town on the itinerary to make day trips into the surrounding areas. Please offer any insights or suggestions, including how to present as travelers not tourists, that will help make this a trip of a lifetime. We come from a little village in Hawaii and are attuned to cultural assimilation rather than brash tourism.
Posted by
new york
1292 posts
But those hotel dates do not fill three weeks....maybe I misunderstood...(??)
Posted by
Mid-Atlantic area
8403 posts
The drive time between Santander and Santillana del Mar is only 30 minutes and Llanes in only an hour. Llanes to Oviedo is only an hour’s drive. Driving won’t be an issue, but finding something to do between checking out of one hotel and into another could be problematic since you’ll be arriving well before check in time.
One day or a portion of a day could be spent visiting Covadonga in the Picos de Europa park.
Towns we enjoyed in the area of León include, Astorga, Hospital de Öbrigo, and Valencia de Don Juan. Places I have bookmarked to visit between León and Burgos include, Belmonte de Campos Castle, Montealegre de Campos Castle, and Castillo de Ampudia. All three are near each other.
In the Burgos area some nice places are, Cartuja de Miraflores, Castrojeriz, Parque Natural Cañón del Río Lobos, Covarrubias, Monasterio de San Pedro de Arlanza, the movie set for Sad Hill Cemetery from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, a short nature walk at Desfiladero de La Yecla, El Burgo de Osma, Ezcaray, Santo Domingo de la Calzada, and the list goes on.
Santillana Del Mar is a huge tourist destination. León and Burgos are less touristy, but are right on the Camino de Santiago, so they receive many pilgrims. Some places like Sad Hill Cemetery, Cañon de Río Lobos, and the Desfiladero de La Yecia are in fairly remote locations most tourists never make it to. Some of the towns I mentioned are on the Camino de Santiago, but others see very few tourists.
The cathedrals in León and Burgos are nice. Near Santillana is the reproduction Altamira caves, but there are other non-reproduction caves in the area. Others can help with those since I don’t visit them.
Posted by
Washington DC
30250 posts
Two places I liked that are sort of between Burgos and Bilbao are Vitoria-Gasteiz, the Basque capital, which has a hill-top medieval area reachable via outdoor escalators, and the medieval hill town of Laguardia. Vitoria-Gasteiz doesn't seem to get much tourist traffic. Laguardia seems to be a destination for wine-lovers. You should park down below Laguardia; there's a lift.
Posted by
Bilbao
1019 posts
We have booked hotels in Santander (3 nights), Santillana del Mar (2 nights), Llanes (3 nights), Oviedo (3 nights), León (3 nights), Burgos (3 nights), and back to Bilbao (4 nights).
Blockquote
Santander, Santillana and Llanes are quite close, so you may want to choose just one or two places for your stay. Santillana del Mar is quite touristy, and it´s a good place to explore the nearby caves (not the reproduction cave of Altamira, which is more a museum than a real cave). For example, El Castillo or Las Monedas (tours in English only if you buy the whole capacity of the visit, I believe it´d be 90eur per cave total. Otherwise, tours are in Spanish). And there are others, of course (Covalanas and Cullalvera, in Ramales de la Victoria, for example). Not that much to see in Llanes, it´s nice, but one night is more than enough (same goes for Santander).
While in Bilbao, you may want to get out of the city and explore Bermeo, Gernika and its Assembly Hall (Casa de Juntas, one of the oldest Parliaments in the world and one of the reasons your president John Adams stayed in Bilbao for 9 days back in 1780, with John Quincy and Richard Adams), Ea, Elantxobe, Durango, Elorrio, Mundaka...Bilbao has a great old town with a 14th century cathedral, a fantastic Fine Arts Museum (undergoing renovation), a Basque Museum (to reopen in May 2026) and of course, the Guggenheim.
An important point of cultural assimilation in Spain is to get used to lunch (around 2pm) as the very main meal of the day, while dinner is quite unimportant (and rarely for us before 0900 or 0930pm, although there are places that open earlier).