I am truly enjoying our report. We hope to visit the same area next year and I am just beginning my research. Can you recommend any sources for better understanding the menus in the area? My Spanish is very limited and I have no current knowledge of the Basque language. I would like to know some key phrases if possible and would especially like to be able to understand menus.
Thanks again for the report. I will be saving it for reference as I continue planning.

GiGiGi...

Thanks for reading my report. As for understanding menus, I honestly don't remember having too much difficulty. Many of the sit down restaurants we went to would ask us if we wanted an English Menu. Those that didn't we muddled through and asked questions. I do know a little French, Spanish and Italian, so I could figure out things pretty well on menus.

As for the pintxos bars, most of the time we either just picked a cold pintxos from the plates displayed on the bars or in the case of hot pintxos we would see something interesting another person was having and order that or just point to something that caught our eye on the blackboard menus. My mom and I are a bit adventurous when eating, so this way of ordering didn't bother us and we sometimes found fantastic morsels we otherwise may have missed!

I did download the Maribel guides to the Basque region, and they were helpful. I found Maribel's website through a post here on Fodors. I don't have the website link with me right now, but I think I just googled something like Maribel's guides Spain and found it. Or you can probably do a search here on Fodors and find Maribel's information.

I like the way you eyeball eats and eateries and make a judgment call even if nobody told you to go there. I'm also amazed you were able to pack away pintxos and then sit down to dinner. I just couldn't! Big lunch, pintxos -- I was full!

zeppole...

I know, I typically don't eat that this at home! :-D BUT...it was San Sebastian and I wanted to experience as much as I could...good thing we walked ALOT! ;-)

Day 6: Tuesday, May 18th

It was the perfect day to see Bilbao, sunny and cool. The drive to Bilbao from San Sebastian took about an hour and when we arrived in Bilbao we started with a walking tour of the Old Town area. I have to say I was really impressed with this area, actually with Bilbao as a whole. I was not expecting such a charming city. The Old Town has some beautiful buildings and I really got the feeling people lived and worked in this part of town, it wasn’t just a touristy-kitschy neighborhood. The cathedral has lovely stained glass windows and is also one of the very many places of worship along the Camino de Santiago (which we will explore more later in the week).

We meander our way through Old Town Bilbao with Robert giving us some of the history of not just the city but the Basque culture and customs as well. After a few hours we wind our way into the new part of town and I must say the city of Bilbao (at least the areas we were in) was very clean.

Now it was lunch time and we had about 3 hours before our appointment at the Guggenheim Museum. During my pre-trip research I had come across a restaurant that was noted for the Joselito ham they served. According to the recommendation I had it was supposed to be the best ham in Bilbao, mom and thought…let’s give it a try.

We found La Vina de Ensanche located at Calle Diputación,10 in the new part of Bilbao (http://www.lavinadelensanche.com/index.html). As we walked up the street we found a covered eating area with about 15 tables in front of the restaurant on the pedestrian walkway. There was a table free and we took a seat. The servers were very friendly, only spoke Spanish and the menu was not in English. All around us the other customers were speaking Spanish.

We opened the menu and decided to reward ourselves with the most delectable plate of Joselito ham. I have never had ham this good…honest, it was so smooth and creamy, if ham can even be creamy. Now, since I’m not completely proficient in Spanish I mistakenly thought I had ordered the €13 ham plate and not the €26 ham plate. But after seeing the plate that was presented to us I had no misconception that this had to be the more expensive plate, and it was the best €26 I have ever spent. We also ordered salads, which were huge; this was beginning to be the biggest lunch I had eaten a long time! Mom had duck & foie on a bed of beautiful greens. I had the most incredible version of a caprese salad I have ever had. On a bed of greens with sun-dried tomatoes and pignoli nuts there were four small-ish balls of mozzarella each sliced in half and a layer of tomato basil marmalade in between each, it was like 4 mozzarella sandwich balls. This was easily the best salad I have ever had. And I know I’d chosen well when a table of 2 women sat down near us and as they placed their order they turned in our direction, pointed to my salad and held up 2 fingers, they each got the same salad.

We enjoyed a couple glasses of house wine and ended the meal with espresso. It was the perfect 2 hour lunch on a beautiful day enjoying the sunshine in Bilbao.

Near 3:30pm we met the group at the entrance to the Guggenheim Bilbao and went in for our 90 minute guided tour of the museum. I found the building itself to be very interesting to look at, but I’m not a huge fan of the modern art inside. There were a few exhibits I found mildly interesting but everything else was kind of lost on me.

We arrived back in San Sebastian just before 8pm. Tonight we decided to walk across the bridge into the Gros neighborhood and check out Viento Sur at Calle Zurriola, 4 and have a couple glasses of wine. This is a restaurant but they have a nice bar area with good cocktails and wine. The restaurant looked great, but we decided to move onto a different place for dinner.

We walked back to the old town and settled on Urbano Restaurant located at Calle 31 de Agosto, 17 (http://www.restauranteurbano.com/en/index.html). This restaurant is owned by the same people as Casa Urola and I have to say that enjoyed this meal even more than the one at Casa Urola.

It was about 10pm and the restaurant had tables available so we were seated quickly, without a reservation. We started with a really nice bottle of local Rose wine and a shrimp and scallop pintxo. Mom had the turbot with potatoes for her main dish and I had the roasted lamb with an emmenthal cheese chip. Both entrees were excellent. And as a side note, the kitchen and restaurant were staffed by all women, I’m not sure if that was just for this night, but it was something I noted. With 2 espresso to end the meal the total bill was €60.

We had a short walk back to the hotel and were in our room by midnight.

Great report! We were in San Seb same time you were. Loved wandering in and out of the pintxos bars and sampling different ones. The best I had and I still can taste it was a pistachio one -- ground pistachio with some sort of cream/cheese binding it and then lightly fried. Not something that I would normally think sounded good, but it was really different and fabulous! Lucky u got to Bilbao in nice weather. We were there the week b4 u and it was dreary and drizzly, but I fell in love with Bilbao.

yestravel...

We saw the pistachio croquetta at Taberna Astelena too! It looked fantastic, but we had already ordered another pintxo and we let it slip right by us...hmmm...maybe a reason to return! :-)

Have I seen you on the Asia board planning a trip to Vietnam? I'm heading there in late Feb/early March 2011! :-D

Day 7: Wednesday, May 19th

We woke up to a partly cloudy day in San Sebastian and headed south to the Camino de Santiago. By the time we got to the starting point for our walk on the trail the sun was out and there was a wonderful cool breeze. We walked for a little over an hour and took a short break in a little village. There were several pilgrims on the trail and they were very interesting people. We met a Dutch couple who were biking the Camino, an Australian gentleman walking and a French couple who were on a burrow!

After our short break we continued on for about another hour to a small church on the trail. We spent some time there exploring the interior and exterior of the church and taking lots of pictures. We even stopped at the little house next to the church and got a stamp saying we had been at that church, apparently all along the Camino when pilgrims stop at the various churches they receive a stamp indicating they were there.

The section of the Camino we walked had some slight hills, some gravel and dirt as well as paved pathways. We walked through some absolutely stunning scenery. As we walked with the breeze at our backs the fields of grass were blowing and it looked like an enormous sea of flowing green.

At the end of our walk we got back on the bus for the quick drive to the winery where we were having lunch. Adolfo, the winery owner met us at the door and showed us his small winery and talked about his wine production process. Then we sat down to a great homemade lunch his mother prepared for us. It was delicious. WE had pepper tarts and mushroom tarts, endive salad with a fantastic blue cheese dressing, potato tortilla and wonderfully tender chorizo. To cap it all off we enjoyed the excellent wine from the winery.

After lunch we walked through the town of Puente La Reina which had a couple of nice churches and one very picturesque bridge. This is the bridge of the queen, hence the name of the town.

Today was absolutely pure bliss, if I had been able to special order the weather we had, I could not have asked for better.

We arrived back in San Sebastian just before 6pm and took a short rest. At about 7:30pm we started our evening of Pintxos hopping. Our first stop was La Cuchara de San Telmo on a side alley off of Calle 31 Agosto. Believe me, it is worth seeking out this place…we LOVED it! Do not be shy about walking in, you will not see any cold pintxos set out on the bar, all the pintxos here are hot (made to order) and you order from the blackboard menu behind the bar, or whatever looks good to you that the people around you are eating.

We looked at the menu board and the first words that jumped out at me and I could comprehend were foie and croquette and that is what we ordered. I ordered and we were given a little basket of bread and a couple sets of utensils. The barman poured our txokoli and we waited happily among the other diners for our food to arrive.

We received the most incredibly delicious morsels of food. We think the croquette was either duck or goose liver inside and the foie was absolutely without a doubt “to die for”. Imagine the best part of grilled steak being the slightly char-grilled piece of fat; that is what this foie tasted like only better. We ordered a second glass of txokoli and through pointing and my limited Spanish; we took the barman’s advice and ordered the queso and vegetable dish. Wow! A mini sized wheel of brie or camembert cheese with warm peppers, and carrots baked into the top, it was delicious. For 3 pintxos, 4 glasses of wine the total cost was €19.70. Very well worth it!

Our next stop was the pintxos bar Fuego Negro located on Calle 31 Agosto. For as old school as some of the other pintxos bars we went to were, this place was modern on the cusp of being flashy. I really wanted to try the gazpacho served in an orb that I kept hearing this place served, but it was not on the blackboard menu this evening…bummer. However we did sit back (yes there were open stools at this place!) and have a nice glass of wine.

Just after 9pm we walked up the street to see if we could get into Kokotxa for dinner, no luck without a reservation. That was my bad for not being on the ball and making a reservation at this Michelin starred restaurant…but that just gives me a reason to go back to San Sebastian!

But with disappointment there is also happiness…we found ourselves walking down into Bodegan Alejandro instead (http://www.bodegonalejandro.com/es/presentacion/). This restaurant is located on Calle de Fermin Calbeton, 4. When you enter from street level you will walk down a flight of stairs into a lovely dining room that is all wood and tiles.

Since we hadn’t yet tried a tasting menu in San Sebastian we decided the one here at Bodegan Alejandro looked very good. There were 6 courses for €38.

The amuse bouche was a cold asparagus soup which was delicious. The first course was marinated anchovy cold lasagna. Mom loved it; I wasn’t as big a fan. The second course was a roasted tomato stuffed with squid and served on black ink risotto. I enjoyed this, once I swirled the dollop of cream into the risotto it was creamy and rich. This dish wasn’t a favorite for mom.

The third course was hake served on potato with iodized salt and mussel juice it was excellent just the right amount of salt, we both enjoyed this dish very much. The fourth course was Iberian veal cheek it was so tender we didn’t need a knife to cut it, we both deemed this course a winner too. The fifth course was vanilla ice cream with French toast; not a ton of flavor and the French toast was crispy but seemed kind of ho-hum. The sixth course was gnocchi with coconut ice cream this was the winner in the dessert category, it even had a slight lime flavor. We had a bottle of local Rose wine and the dessert was served with an incredibly delicious and smooth orange wine. Two espressos ended the meal. The total cost of the meal was €104.

We happily waddled back to the hotel. Another memorable meal in San Sebastian.

There were so many items that looked good it was always hard to choose! I was sort of fascinated by the pistachio pintxo. I loved it so much I tried to fit it in again, but they weren't serving yet so I only had the one.

Yes, we had a trip planned for mid Feb thru the beginning April to SEAsia VN, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, but the timing wasn't working for us. We were constantly juggling due to one thing or another and the final straw was the "slash & burn" in Laos and NThailand. We were bound to hit it no matter how we moved things around and I didn't want to risk running into that so we're heading to Chile and back to BA instead. I was fascinated by SEAsia and hopefully we'll make it at the end of 2011. I hope u have a great trip there and will look forward to reading your TR. Sure looking forward to the rest of this TR. Always fun to relive one's jounrey thru another persons!

Low country:
you are making me even more excited about Sept trip to Basque region. ! Thanks.

Day 8: Thursday, May 20th

Bon Jour! Today we are heading to the city of Bayonne in the French Basque region. We did a brief walking tour with Robert and then had a guided tour of the Museum of Basque Culture (www.musee-basque.com). I really liked this museum with very interesting exhibits including a large room full of pelota equipment and lots of furniture that would have been in a typical Basque country home. The guide we had here was terrific, so enthusiastic it was infectious; I could have listened to her all day long.

After the museum we were on our own for lunch. We checked out the local market and the cheeses looked fantastic, but I had other plans. While doing the walking tour with Robert we passed an Italian restaurant, I know, I know, we are in France, I should be scoping out French Basque restaurants, but the aroma coming out of this little restaurant could not be ignore and ironically enough the name of the restaurant was Piccolo Ristorante!

We sat outside in the sunshine and between our shattered French and Italian we figured out each item on the chalkboard menu, as our server rattled on in rapid-fire French explaining each item to us. We knew which ones she was recommending by the change in her tone and excitement in her voice!

Mom started with a goat cheese, tomato, basil, olive, fig, hazelnut and raisin “tartine” it was served layered in what I would call a rocks glass. It was very tasty. I had the eggplant “cannelloni”, the eggplant used in place of pasta and the filling was delicious but I’m still trying to figure out exactly what it was! There was a hint of lavender in it for sure.

For our main dishes, mom had asparagus pasta topped with salmon and we think there was saffron in the pasta since it was very yellow, the asparagus sauce was perfection. I had the lamb lasagna served in a round baking dish and it was melt in your mouth delectable. With 2 glasses of wine and 2 espresso the total cost was €39.

After lunch we walked to the Musee Bonnat. This museum admission was included in our tickets to the Museum of Basque Culture and it was well worth the trip. The collection is not huge, but it was interesting and worth the 30 minutes it takes to see this small museum.

We also did a little shopping in Bayonne and since this city is well known for its chocolate we had to stop and get some. After we got home and tried the chocolate the only thing we were disappointed with was the fact that we didn’t buy more!

At about 4pm we drove to St. Jean de Luz, a seaside town in the French Basque Country. We wandered into the Eglise St. Jean Baptiste where the marriage of Louis XIV and Marie Therese took place. Although the church seems plain from the outside, inside is an incredibly beautiful altar.

We had plenty of time to wander about in St. Jean de Luz and then we found an outdoor café and decided it was time for an aperitif. We had a couple glasses of Izarra, which we were told is a local digestive. With the fluorescent green color it seemed electric, it wasn’t bad, but I ‘m not sure I would clamor back for another glass!

Tonight we had a group dinner in St. Jean de Luz at Le Kaiku, located at 17, rue de la Republique. This was a great meal. It all started with a kir, and I’m thinking it can only get better from here! Mom and I both choose the charcuterie plate and it was fantastic. We both also choose the pork with mushroom dish and it was perfectly cooked and flavorful. Both red and white wines were on the table and we ended the meal with a trio of crème brulee. The desserts were, in my opinion, the weakest point of the meal.

During dinner I had the pleasure to sit across from our bus driver. He was practicing his English while I was trying to practice my Spanish. I think he was “winning” but he was kind enough to say that he wished he could speak English as well as I spoke Spanish…I’m pretty sure he was just being kind to me!

Ending the meal on that high note we had about an hour drive back to San Sebastian and we were at our hotel by 10:30pm, an early night for us!

Was the guide at the Museum of Basque culture part of the museum offering or was she part of your tour?

jubilada...I don't know for certain, but it seemed since we were on a tour we were able to get a group guided tour.

Day 9: Friday, May 21st

We had nothing on our agenda today except our final group dinner this evening. We had a leisurely breakfast at the hotel and then took a walk around the new town and did a little shopping.

I went to the bus company ticket office to buy bus tickets to go back to the Bilbao airport tomorrow. I have to give myself a pat on the back here, because I was able to ask for our bus tickets in Spanish and, more importantly, the woman behind the counter understood what I said!

We did a little pintxos bar hopping for lunch and went back to Tamboril for their hot mushroom special, which I think wasn’t all that special. We did have another bacala croquetta and it was as good as it was the first time we had one. Then we headed over to our favorite pintxos bar, San Telmo and had the queso and vegetable pintxo again, and it was as great as the other day. We then braved the chalkboard menu and just picked a couple items. We had the tempura fried bacala and it was as light as air. Then we saw the barman write a new item on a separate chalkboard under the shelves were the glasses were. I suspect this chalkboard is where they list the nightly specials because there were only 2 items listed here. When we ask the barman what the second item is we are told it is baby pig…sounds good to us. Oh My God! I am so glad we listened to our gut instinct. This pork had unbelievable flavor, as I took my first bite I let out a big…”yum”! Well, that was all the man standing next to us needed to hear because the next thing we know he is smiling at us and ordering the baby pig too!

After lunch I took another walk along the Paseo Nuevo and took some more pictures. We spent the rest of the day relaxing and getting our bags together for our flight to Paris tomorrow.

Before our final group dinner mom and I had our last pre-meal aperitivo at Viento Sur, a couple glasses of wine and back to the hotel to meet the group. We had a 9pm dinner reservation at Restaurante Astelena (not the pintxos bar by the same name) located at Calle Euskalerria, 3 (www.restauranteastelena.com).

Robert, our guide did a great job at selecting this restaurant, it was fabulous! We had a private, glass front dinning room, perfect for our group of 10. We had a five course meal that was one of the best meals we had the entire time in San Sebastian. Red and white wine were flowing. The white was crisp and “grapefruity”. The bread here was the best we’d had the entire week, it was soft yet had a crunchy crust.

The first course was a salad topped with fresh tuna and the tuna was delicious. The next course was a fried squid ravioli served in black squid ink; it was tender inside and crunchy outside. The fish course was cod that was so thick and tender, no knife was needed, it was almost the consistency of steak. And speaking of steak, that’s what the next course was, and it was cooked to rare perfection, it nearly melted in my mouth. For dessert a tray of five different desserts were served, we had tiramisu, cherry cheesecake, mango cheesecake, French toast, coffee ice cream and chocolate ice cream. Then we had espresso and to finish everything off we had the local cherry digestive. We thoroughly enjoyed this meal; it was the perfect way to end our stay in San Sebastian.

ttt

Day 10: Saturday, May 22nd

Adios San Sebastian, Bon Jour Paris! Today we would be flying from Bilbao to Paris.

We had breakfast at the hotel and then took a taxi to the bus station to catch the 9am bus to the Bilbao airport. The bus ride was smooth, the bus was not crowded but it had more passengers than the 4 people that were on the bus a week earlier when we arrived.

We arrived at the airport absurdly early (about 10am) for our 1:05pm, but you know that’s just how I travel. We were so early the Air France ticket counter wasn’t even open yet. I was thrown for a bit of loop because the Air France ticket counter was not marked, but after walking by all the counters we eventually found the correct one. We waited until 11am when the ticket counter opened, and were second in line to check-in and get our boarding passes.

Security was a breeze and we waited for our gate to be posted on the monitors in the waiting area. We were bussed out to the waiting Air France plane, boarded and took off on time. It was a short one and a half hour flight. We landed 20 minutes early at Terminal 2G at Charles de Gaule. This terminal is a breeze to navigate. We walked to baggage claim and our bags were the first off the conveyor belt.

I called Paris Perfect Apartments to let them know we had landed and collected our bags and would be en route shortly. They said they would be at the apartment waiting for us. We walked into the arrivals hall and our driver was waiting for us. I booked a car pick-up with Inter-Shuttle prior to leaving home. Traffic was not too bad and it took us about an hour to drive into Paris, arriving at the apartment just before 4pm.

The Paris Perfect representatives were there at the apartment waiting for us and showed us the apartment. Our first response upon entering the apartment was a big “Wow…what a view”…the website pictures of the apartment were true…it was spectacular.

The apartment was on the 7th (8th by American standards) floor. It’s compact but has everything we need, including a washing machine/dryer combination unit. After we were shown how to work the appliances, TV, DVD player, etc we tossed in some laundry and ventured out to buy a few groceries.

Rue Clear is just a couple blocks away and that was our destination, and it certainly was a happening place. There seemed to be a flea market of some sorts set up all along Rue Clear and spilling out onto Avenue de la Motte Picquet. I’m not sure if this is a weekly or monthly event since the following Saturday this market was not set up.

We managed to find just what we needed, some cheese, fruit, bread, etc at the various shops along this street. During our walk to Rue Cler we found Le Florimond, where we had dinner reservation for later this evening. I stopped in to confirm the reservation I had made before leaving home and the owner could not have been nicer…”ahhh, yes, the call from the states, we have you for 8pm”…I was a happy girl!

I had selected Le Florimond for our first dinner in Paris for a couple reasons. First because I’d heard good recommendations for this place and secondly because it was just down the street from the apartment. I wanted to make our first night in Paris not only good, but also convenient!

Le Florimond is located at 19 Avenue de la Motte-Picquet (http://www.leflorimond.com/) near the Latour Maubourg and Ecole Militaire metro stops. The menu was only in French but the owner/maitre d’ was more than happy to answer our questions in English. At 8pm most of the diners here were speaking English, however later in the week when we went a second time with a 9:30pm reservation most of the patrons were speaking French.

The dining room has maybe 12 tables and there were about 4 tables set outside. This was a Saturday night and I am glad I made a reservation, every table was full. The set menu was €35.

We started with kirs for our aperitif. The amuse bouche of pureed eggplant topped with tomato sauce was wonderful, but then I never met and eggplant I didn’t like! For the starter I had a pork crepe but it was served layered, almost lasagna style with a fresh tomato sauce (it was called ketchup on the menu, but I’d never had ketchup that good before!). Mom chose the lobster ravioli for her starter, it was buttery and delicious, but if I’m being honest, my starter “won”, it was out of this world good.

Mom decided to ask about one of the items on the menu because all we could figure out was that it was “grandmother’s recipe”. It was stuffed cabbage and mom was very happy she asked about it because it may have possibly been the best thing she ate in Paris! The cabbage was stuffed with pork; this was the “winning” main dish. I had a veal sausage and veal skewer with delicious white beans and haricots verte. We both had the fromage blanc with raspberry sauce for dessert. With a bottle of Rose wine and 2 espresso the total cost of the meal was €105.

We happily walked the two minutes back to the apartment and stood in our window amazed at the view of the sparkling Eiffel Tower! It was a great way to start our week in Paris.

Marcy, great trip report! Anxiously awaiting the rest!

Tracy

Thanks Tracy. I always dread starting a trip report, then once I "get into it" I'm like a woman on a mission to get it finished...I'm hoping to have it completed by this weekend...stay tuned! :-)

What a combo - San Seb & Paris! Continuing to enjoy reading your TR.

ttt