One-Night Stays at Countryside Hotels (France)
 

Just beginning to plan a 9-day trip with my parents (they're 79 and 80) to the Basque Country, both the Spanish and the French side.

In doing research (including here, of course), I'm coming up with a lot of delightful hotel / restaurants with great food in small towns in the countryside (for example, Les Freres Ibarboure, Auberge Basque, La Maison Olhabidea). I know we'll have a difficult time deciding which to stay at, and where to go with our somewhat limited time.

Which led me to wonder - with inns or hotels like that, that may be known for their food, and that may be in a location where there are few other restaurants nearby, do people tend to spend multiple nights there? If so, do people then eat at that same restaurant all the nights of their stay? And would it be unsurprising if (IF) we ended up spending one night only at several different places?

More curious than anything else.

While we like to spend more than one night in one place, just to avoid the packing and unpacking and packing again, and usually there is enough to see for a full day (two nights) and then some, it has happened often that we were in an in-between situation where we stayed just one night, and - either by choice or for expedience's sake - ate at the hotel's own restaurant for that one night.

And if you stay two nights in one hotel, there's no problem with eating "out" one of those two nights. (Unless you have a very grumpy owner of a rather small place where such things are noticed, it happens but it's their problem.)

More important, it seems to me considering the advanced ages involved, is that you avoid unnecessary relocating, comfort and recuperation come from staying put.

I think you will find that many of those places may require you to stay at least 2 nights and eat at the hotel at least one night. This occurred to us several times on road rips through France (in Inn known for their food).

We've spent 4 weeks (two trips) vacationing in the Pays Basque region of France. We dined at Les Freres Ibarboure twice, and Auberge Basque once. On both trips, we thought that Ibarboure was the best restaurant we had dined at. Auberge Basque in St Pee was about 3rd. It's a small area - we spent 2 weeks in Sare and 2 weeks in Osses. We visited then entire area near Sare without driving too much (longer driving from Osses).

I wrote an itinerary/trip report describing our exploration of this region. If you would like a copy, e-mail me at [email protected] & I'll attach one to the reply e-mail. I've sent over 5,000 of my various itineraries to people on Fodors.

Stu Dudley

The Pays Basque is a rather small area, so it would be easy to select one central place to use as a base. As far as doing lunch or dinner at the place where you are staying, few require you to dine there, but having breakfast works, especially when staying at the Auberge Basque, since you would have to drive 10 minutes or so to find someplace else to have breakfast.

One of the nice things about staying close to the Spanish border is that if you are running late for lunch, you can always head for Navarra or the País Vasco for lunch. They eat far too early for me on the French side.

You might take a look at Maribel's Guide to the Pays Basque for a little more information.

We've used Logis Hotels when travelling around France. Their website gives two gratings for each hotel - one for accommodation, the other for their dining room.

We have had some stupendous meals, in unique hotels. While they all come under the Logis umbrella, each is individually owned and more often than not run as a small family business.

Di

I second logis de france and also hotels et chateaux. They must have a site.
We usually find them great and they often double with a good restaurant.
Only small issues are : gaining weight as the same time wallet gets thinner.

Sometimes the cost of breakfast isn't included with the hotel room, and it can be an expensive meal.

When we have a one-night stay coming up, I pick out what I'll need for the upcoming night and morning and pack it all in a smaller bag. The rest stays in the trunk.

Thank you all for your comments. I was specifically wondering what the local / regional / French custom is regarding what we might call destination restaurants, which I gather some of these places are. Whether people drive to these places intentionally to have dinner there, and spend the night, and then move on, or whether people go for the weekend and eat at the same restaurant for several nights.

michel - Yes, the whole inconvenience of one-night stays will need to be factored in to our planning and decisions. I laughed when you said "advanced ages." I know that they are, but I don't think of my parents as being old. My dad has some knee and back problems that slow him down a bit, but my mom is VERY energetic. She belongs to a kayaking group with a bunch of people who are my age. The biggest problem with one-night stays, I'm predicting, will be my father the clothes horse.

Stu - I do already have your trip notes, they were included in one of your replies to another poster. When you ate at these restaurants, did you have lunch or dinner? If dinner, I assume you then drove back to your gite in the dark?

WoinParis - We (DH and I) have used Logis de France, and enjoy staying at them. I will look into their places once we get further into planning.

And I also already have Maribel's guide. This being the very beginning of our planning, I have only skimmed through Stu's notes and Maribel's guide so far.

>>Stu - ..... When you ate at these restaurants, did you have lunch or dinner?<<

Dinner

>>If dinner, I assume you then drove back to your gite in the dark?<<

Yep - but it was less than 20 mins back to our Gite in Sare.

Stu Dudley