MARK WOLDIN
Basque Country Tour Guide
To book a tour, call or email:
(+34) 660-976-422 Mark@BasqueTouring.com
Tapas Bars • Restaurants • Walks and Hikes • History and Culture
The famous pincho (tapa) bars of San Sebastian (Donostia in Basque) are the best in the world – bar none. There are more Michelin two- and three-star restaurants here than anywhere outside Paris.
The hiking and backpacking in the Pyrenees is beautiful, dramatic and exciting. The ancient Way of St. James (el Camino de Santiago) passes right through the Basque region, as well.
The centuries-old history of the Basque Country is on display in the streets. The old shops, the great buildings, the tiny medieval villages – all tell their own complex and profound stories.
You can drive from one end of the Basque country to the other in three hours.
The Basque people speak their own Basque language; they cook and eat Basque food; their houses are built in the Basque style. They even have their own sport, pelota, which is a ball game played in various ways in the town’s covered court, called the fronton. Every Basque village has two things: a church and a fronton. (It is sometimes hard to know which is the more important.)
I have lived here in the Basque country for 13 years. Let me help you get to know this wonderful place. It would be my pleasure.
In this small expanse of Spain and France is a lot of diversity:
Bilbao is a bustling postindustrial river port, gruff and friendly, with loud bars, an opera house, the best soccer fans in the country, and of course the Guggenheim Museum.
San Sebastian (Donostia in Basque) is a jewel, an elegant, Belle Epoque summer resort, the nation’s gastronomic capital, rimmed by three beaches, and a coastal splendor to rival la Côte d’Azur. Its tapas bars are the best in the world – bar none.
Biarritz and Bayonne. Biarritz is a spectacularly beautiful coastal town, a chic playground for Parisians in the summertime, with high-end shopping and a bohemian surf scene as well. For the French who no longer care for the Côte d’Azur scene, Biarritz is the place. Only ten minutes away, Bayonne (Baiona in Basque) is much bigger than Biarritz, more emphatically Basque, and more historically rich.
Pamplona (Iruña in Basque) is more culturally mixed. It is partly Basque, partly Navarro and partly truly Spanish. This is where they run with the bulls during the festival of San Fermin in the second week of July. Compared to San Sebastian or Bilbao it is relatively sleepy the rest of the year, but still worth a short visit.
The countryside. And between these small but important cities are various farming valleys and small fishing villages that still retain a feeling from other times — from 100 years ago, from 500 years ago, at times it seems a millennium. There is superb hiking, visits to caves and cheesemakers, cider houses, sporting events, concerts and many festivals throughout the region that keep alive the Basque world.