Little bit of good news: I have reservations for 3 of the locations where we plan to stay. I am glad that I can experience a Parador, I have a reservation near Vitoria at Parador de Argomaniz. I still need one for Burgos.
The bad news is that one of my European flights was cancelled and I had to pay double for tickets with a different airline. In addition, the host for the apartment I reserved in Bilbao after a lot of research canceled my reservation.... So I am back to research. I found quite a few apartments that (according to their descriptions) would fit our needs and are reasonably priced. However, I do not know which one to pick based on the neighborhoods they are in. VRBO and Airbnb do not publish exact addresses, only areas. Some appear to be in Indautxu, Atxuri, Abando, Casco Viejo. Many appear to be close to the Guggenheim Museum. I captured small screen shots of the maps but I do not know how to add attachments...

Any suggestions regarding area to pick, would be much appreciated.

Manuela

Alex


Manuela


Amaia



Ibone


Iratxe



Patricia

Suzanna,
A quick question: Is the "Iratxe" this one, a 2 bedroom?
https://www.vrbo.com/10368006ha

If so, it's just a quick walk from the Guggenheim and a great neighborhood, imo.

Thanks, Maribel. Yes, that's the one. This apartment however is on my "wait list", I sent a question and I am waiting for the answer. Is any of the other ones a not so "practical area"? Is any place close to Guggenheim a good place? My preference at this time is Alex and Manuela (which by mistake is uploaded twice).

Yes, any place close to the Guggenheim is a good place. I hope that the apartment comes off the wait list because the location is ideal.

Is the Alex this one?
https://www.vrbo.com/10185287ha

If so, also an excellent location.

Thanks, Maribel. I didn't want to post links for these places because I didn't want to ask people to spend time going to them. I thought that the little maps would do the job. The Alex one is at Airbnb

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/plus/30...0PtQ7r3PXCWsUZ

Two others I am looking at:

https://www.vrbo.com/10143633ha?adul...ure=2020-09-19

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1978171...oG52GnpVWz6eIb

The Alex is fine.
If the last airbnb is within 50 meters of the Guggenheim, yes, it's also a fine location.

That said, I'll leave it to our Bilbao native mikelg, to opine on all of these.

Thanks again, Maribel. After a bit of agony, I reserved Alex for Bilbao and also found a place I liked in Burgos. So I am now breathing relived. If life cooperates with my plans, I will get back to planning towards the end of February, after a week of cross country skiing. I will start the day-to-day planning and make all needed local reservations for places that require them. Our trip is 6 weeks: London, Northern Spain, Berlin and Hungary, with a hop to Transylvania. I have accommodations reserved for all places.

I could have not done it without the help I got from the experts on this forum, so many thanks.

It appears that thankfully the virus that infected the Fodor's servers and was attacking Apple computers was eradicated. It was such a royal pain to deal with it.

Happy planning to all of you and I will be back.

Glad you were able to reserve Alex for your dates. Look forward to your future planning.

Hi again, Fodorites:

I am trying to get back in planning mode and looking at information I copied out that I felt will be useful. I somehow got a few months to mikelg's blogs (?) and forgot to copy the URL. Now I only have a paper copy of 2 days in Bilbao without a car, and many other vary helpful sections of what he published a while ago (but probably still valid) and I cannot go to the links in the articles....

I do not know if mikelg is still reading these posts, but I am hoping that he or maybe someone else can send me a link to his blogs/articles in English. They would be of great help if I could get back to them. Unfortunately I cannot remember how I got to them in the first place.... Thanks.

My pleasure, with many thanks....https://mugalari.wordpress.com/2010/...ar-the-basics/, it´s just a bit outdated. Some places don´t exist any more, like La Granja café (I´m still in shock, such a gem has been replaced by Thermomix), or Café Boulevard (closed, seemingly forever). Café Iruña is undergoing renovation and will reopen in July this year. The rest of the info is correct, but please feel welcome to send me a message if you need further info. In any case, it´s a walkable city, with excellent public transport and lots of pedestrian streets.

Thanks a lot mikelg for your quick reply, the link and your offer. This link should also take me back to your other useful articles from where I made copies.

Once when you have the time, I would like to understand why one should not accept the plate handed by the waiter in a pintxo bar or order them from the list on the wall. Obviously not urgent.

Thanks to you, Suzanna. Well, it´s all about the local way. First of all, there are hundreds of bars and most are very close to each other. Bars show open doors and families and kids are welcome. They are not places to drink, but places to socialize, to meet friends and family. Pintxos are normally laid out in the counter, or can also be made on order in some places (more elaborate and more expensive). In Bilbao, for example (pintxos are all over the place in the Basque Country, not only San Sebastian), we just take them with our hands, normally just one per bar, and to go with a "small" drink, like a glass of wine, a "zurito" (half beer), a cider (not sweet, not carbonated) or a txakoli (local white wine). We are not eating, we are not dining or "lunching", it´s just a way to lessen the influence of alcohol (getting drunk is just out of the question, totally unacceptable) and to enjoy an excellent piece of food. Normally, standing, as we spend normally less than 15min in each place.

If the waiter hands you the plate and you fill it up with pintxos, and you sit down and eat 6 pintxos...what do you do next?? You´ll be missing the pintxos and the atmosphere of other places, because you´ll be stuffed. Pintxos are very different from place to place, there may be 5,000 different kinds, and the fun consists on tasting different ones in different places (each bar has some pintxos which are special). Just remember, you´re not having a meal, you´re just enjoying the local atmosphere and some high gastronomy in a very small and affordable way.

I´m sure you´ll understand it when you get here, it´s easy, it´s fun and it´s very entertaining!! We should also talk sometime about how to order wine, also different than in other countries...

Thanks, mikelg. I do understand, but as you said, experiencing it will make a difference.

I contacted the Pozalagua cave that you mentioned, for some additional information which I am waiting for. Their website has a calendar for buying tickets online which seems to be all blocked out, so I am not sure how can one avoid driving there and not find tickets. I will wait for their reply. It looks like a very interesting place, out of our itinerary but maybe I can include it. Thanks for the many suggestions in your blogs.

Worth a visit, but take into account that on the second half of September they´ll only open on weekends. You´ll need a car to get there, and if by chance you are lucky to visit them, I´d also visit the Torre Loizaga castle and the unique collection of Rolls Royces and other classic automobiles, a must...that only opens on weekends too.

If you like caves, I´d visit El Castillo or Las Monedas caves in neighboring Cantabria region, just a bit over one hour drive from Bilbao. Full of beautiful prehistoric paintings that you can actually see, and worth paying an exclusive tour in English (not expensive and you´ll have the language and the exclusivity guaranteed). https://cuevas.culturadecantabria.com/en/, also Cullalvera (high up...) and Covalanas are worth the visit.

Thanks, mikelg. I do have a foot problem which prevents me from going up/down on many stairs, steep or very uneven surfaces. So I am looking at each cave to make sure that I can avoid those that are not appropriate for me. Maribel suggested a cave with prehistoric paintings that would be easy to do.

We will see how the itinerary/timing works out for all of this (I see that about 6 km of the road to the cave are very windy, so they will take more time than Google shows). We will not have time for everything in the 11 full days we will be in the area. I am also not sure yet if they have tours every hour (wait time ?) or if one can go in without a tour if there are not enough people. We would not understand the guide anyway, as our Spanish is very rudimentary and the guide supposedly doesn't speak English. I am following up with the cave staff regarding this.

We are supposed to land in Bilbao around 6pm on a Monday. We will pick up our car, drive to the apartment that is about 10 min walk from Guggenheim, unload our belongings and then park the car. After that, I would probably want to just stroll around for an hour or so and maybe have a bite. Any close by streets, locations for the stroll? I know that on Mondays it is hard to find open places for eating. Any suggestions for a place for a light meal around 8-9 pm that might be open? What is the open timeframe for supermarkets? Thanks.

Bilbao is a city, so even if many places close on Mondays (something quite common all over Spain), there´ll be many places open. Not sure where your apartment is, but if you go to the area of Henao-Heros-Juan de Ajuriaguerra streets there are quite a few places that should be open for a light meal. Eveything in Bilbao is at walking distance. Also, Diputación street will offer open places, as well as Ledesma street. Bars and places to have a bite is our specialty! Supermarkets close around 8- 0830pm, there´s one (just one...) that does not close, Opencor in Alameda de Recalde street.

Street parking is metered, in case you don´t have a garage in your apartment, and quite complicated to find empty spots...

Thanks for the very helpful info, mikelg. We are away from home, so I don't have here the address of the apartment, but since places are within walking distance, we should not have any issues. The apartment comes with a parking spot in a garage.

Suzanna,
In post #53, I suggested a visit to the caves of Soplao in Cantabria, as it's tailor made for tourists, even wheelchair accessible, with a cafeteria, shop, restrooms, and one enters the cave via a mine train. It's a unique experience But as kja notes in post #54, people visit for the unusual geological formations, the stalactites and stalagmites. There's no prehistoric art.

It sits an hour, 50-minute drive WEST of Bilbao, a fairly easy exit from the A8 motorway and is well signed. The web page has detailed driving directions. One should book online.
https://www.elsoplao.es/en.