Burgos or extra day in San Sebastian or Barcelona

As much as I dislike Barcelona, you'll need all the time you can get to do it justice. Unless you just have to see the museum, Bilbao doesn't offer much to the average tourist. Bayonne is a bit out of the way. San Sebastian is just one more resort and has been for a hundred and fifty years. I know all three of the above cities well and could skip any one of them for a day in Burgos. The bigger question is how you're going to move between any of these four places in three days - - nothing works as well as a car (you'll figure this out real fast when you start messing with train connections - - e.g.; you can get from San Sebastian to Bilbao on a bike faster than you can by train). Also, you'll need to thing how you're going to get to the departure and end points for this northern loop.

Soo. . .you dislike Barcelona. Doesn't seem like you like the Basque area too much either. So, if you were starting out from Paris 8 days prior to the start of a RS Tour, how would you spend your 8 days? I've heard the trains are very slow, but after reading about buses to catch, etc. I didn't figure there were that much of a problem. I had just started to second-guess my agenda because of the positive reviews I heard of Burgos. I have a couple of months to get the agenda down, nothing is written in stone, so I'm open to any and all suggestions. Thanks.

Whoaa! I never said I disliked the Basque area. I grew up there and try to get back every couple or three years. I probably biked every road from San Sebastian to Santander from the coast to fifty miles inland. I could give you a list of things within twenty-five miles of Bilbao that you couldn't see in a two weeks. My point was that there's just not much for the average tourist that you couldn't give up a day for to include Burgos. Getting around without a car is going to be a problem anywehere in the area in that you're going to spend a half day getting from San Sebastian to Bilbao, probably more from San Sebastian to Bayonne. You're just going to have to watch transit times if use mass trasportation or you won't have time to see anything anywhere.

We did not visit Burgos (nor Bayonne) so I cannot comment on whether its worth cutting some time from the other cities; but regarding transportation Burgos is about 2.5-3 hrs from Bilbao on the line between Madrid and Bilbao so no problem getting there by rail. Between Bilbao and San Sebastian there is a direct bus that takes about an hour and runs many times each day, whereas the train takes several hours. If you wanted to visit the smaller towns surrounding SS or Bilbao you would need a car because the bus service is somewhat irregular. Train between SS and Barcelona was relaxing and very scenic but takes 5 hrs. You could fly from Bilbao-BCN to save time. I don't know how many days the RS tour has you in Barcelona although I imagine they will usher you through all of the major sights. We spent 3 days in Barcelona and could have easily spent a fourth day. 3 days for Bayonne/SS/Bilbao sounds about right I think because you will need to use part of each day to travel. The charm in both SS and Bilbao is in the old cities and the evenings are fun for the pintxos crawling...many of the pinxtos bars were not open during the day. If you are not planning to visit the Guggenheim you could see SS and Bilbao in the same day, with a night spent in each city...or I suppose even skip viewing Bilbao altogether and use it only for a transfer point. I'm not a big fan of modern art but I couldn't help being impressed by the Guggenheim and I'm glad that I saw it.

Thanks, that helps alot. I'm going to keep my days in Barcelona (2) and the tour is about 2 days. I've heard that the way to get around the Bilboa/SS/Bayonne is by bus, so that's what we'll do. We enjoy the rails, what little we have done in other Europe countries. We drive way too much here in the states and that is part of our vacation is to have someone else do the driving. Flying is not something we want to do. I'm now thinking of an overnight train from Paris to Madrid, go up to Burgos for the day/night, and then hit the Basque country from there, returning to Barcelona. I appreciate your comments, thanks so much!