San Sebastian City Breaks – Europe’s Pintxos Capital

I’m intrigued by the possibility of San Sebastian City Breaks, because I’ve been there two or three times but never managed to park up and have a good look around! Driving around Europe in a car, and northern Spain in particular, San Sebastian seems like a must visit, but in practice this is no destination for the casual driver. The one way system is a nightmare and the on street parking zones are perpetually full, so you end up being directed on a road out of the city again very soon. And yet San Sebastian has so much going for it. It’s a beautiful city by the sea, with grand old buildings and architectural heritage. It’s close to all the cider villages  where the famous sidra natural or Sagardoa is made. But most of all, San Sebastian is a European food capital, not just for the famous basque cuisine and the finest chefs in their michelin starred restaurants, but for the pintxos bars in the old quarter. Pintxos are the Basque version of tapas, little pieces of very tasty food designed to be eaten with drinks. In San Sebastian as in other cities, the custom is to stroll around several such bars, tasting one dish of the speciality in each. That sounds like a great way to spend a couple of hours in the evening to me.  

So back to the problem. If you cannot just drop in on San Sebastian ( Donostia in Basque)  while touring the area, then what’s the best way to visit the city? Probably you’d want to stay in a hotel in the city centre itself, but if you arrive by train bus or plane, then you don’t have a car  with which to explore the rest of the Basque country while you’re there very easily, so the answer to me seems to be short city breaks.  Fly in, stay for a long weekend, take in all the sights and experiences of Donostia – San Sebastian and then fly out again. So how convenient is the airport? Well the big airport is in Bilbao, but that’s a fair old way although I believe it’s possible to do day trips to San Sebastian and Biarritz by coach from Bilbao.
The Basque Country has its own local train network, called Euskotren. It is very cheap and there are departures every hour (more often if you don’t mind changing trains) but it is very slow – taking about 2h30 to get from Bilbao to San Sebastian. There are also regular buses throughout the day from Bilbao to San Sebastian, and due to the massive investment in roads all over Spain, the 100Km journey only takes about 1 hour  so this could be the best way to take a short city break in the city by the sea. Apart from Bilbao airport, San Sebastian also has it’s own small airport  names after it, but the location is in fact along the coast next to the French border near the medieval town of Hondarribia. The name of the airport is San Sebastian Fuenteraba, after the Spanish version of the name for Hondarribia, and there are no flights from the UK to San Sebastian Fuenteraba so you’d need to be arriving for your city breaks from somewhere else in Europe.

Technorati Tags: basque cuisine, Biarritz, cider, city break, city breaks, city by the sea, donostia san sebastian, EUROPE, european food, flight, Fuenteraba, Hondarribia, michelin starred restaurants, northern spain, san sebastian donostia, sidra, Spain, tasty food