Basque Country-Navarre – RV Travels in Europe and North America

April 11, 2025 Orio SP

We decided to have a laid back day today so we did not plan to leave Orio. We spent the morning doing some light chores around François before heading into town for lunch.

Our neighbor had recommended a restaurant to try, and about 1:45 we started into town to get lunch as it is served later in Spain than we are used to at home. We arrived and ordered a three course lunch with a starter, a main course, and a desert for €13. The waitress spoke limited English, and I can read limited Spanish, she left us her notebook with the options (there were 4 starters, and 4 main courses to pick from), between the three of us we eventually figured out the options and we were served an excellent lunch. After we placed our order the waitress asked us if we wanted water or wine, when we said wine she returned with a bottle of wine and put it in the center of the table. It was included in the €13.

If my Spanish is correct this is a ceramic factory across the river from the center of Orio.

After lunch we decided to take a stroll thru town to burn off some of the food. We also unsuccessfully cased another grocery store looking for Basque Vermouth. On our way back to the campground we saw 2 oxen yoked together with red masks covering their eyes being led from a barn. There happened to be a bench nearby so we sat down to see what was going to happen. Eventually, they hitched the two oxen to a sled and placed a couple of large rocks on it, then a grandfather and we presume his grandson got on the sled, and the boys father led the bulls down the field.

These two oxen were being trained for a Basque sport called Idi Probak.

The bulls were being trained for a Basque sport called Idi Probak. The contest consists of having two ox yoked together at the horns, (if you look carefully at the picture you can see their horns are interlocked.) then heavy rocks are put on a sled, and the ox have to drag the rocks, the sled, and a driver around an oval for 30 minutes to 2 hours. The problem is that the way the ox are yoked together makes it difficult for them to pull in a straight line unless they are well trained, so the driver and another person who walks in front have to work hard to keep the ox on track and moving. The winners are determined by who covers the most distance and carries the most weight in the time period allotted.

The ox off on their Idi Probak training session.

After we returned we took it easy for the rest of the day. I spent some time chatting with our Irish neighbor about life while Ton watched some movies on Netflix.

April 10, 2025 Orio SP

We took our time leaving in the morning as we were hoping that the traffic in Bordeaux would die down. We have experienced more traffic jams passing thru Bordeaux than any city in France including Paris. So we lingered around the campground until 10 am hoping, but we still ran into a lot of slow traffic in Bordeaux. It wasn’t as bad as some of our other trips but it was slow crossing the city.

Once we broke out of Bordeaux the remainder of the trip was smooth sailing and we arrived at one of our favorite campsites in Orio Spain about 1:30. We had made reservations in advance, so check in was smooth, and we were settled in by 2pm. Our neighbors were Irish and English so we had a chat. with them.

Sunrise from our campsite. Not bad for $15.

Later in the afternoon we had a stroll into Orio for some recreational shopping. When we returned we were invited by the Irish neighbor to join him in the campground bar for an after dinner beer.

Ton loves the wide sidewalks in Spain. She calls them three generation sidewalks as often you see three generations of the same family out for a stroll together.

The drink turned into several, and we had a nice time learning about his very interesting life as first a Catholic Priest, and then a teacher in Ireland. Just as we were about to leave, our English neighbors arrived so we enjoyed some more time swapping stories about life in general and traveling in Europe. It was a late (for us), but enjoyable evening.

The port in Orio across from our new campground.

June 8, 2022 Urragne FR

There comes a point in every trip that marks the beginning of the end, and that is the day where the first priority in deciding where to go is moving us closer to the airport. That day was today for this trip. Todays destination was based on getting us about 300km’s closer to Paris, and hopefully finding somewhere interesting.

We are located close to Biarritz which is a famous seaside resort in southern France. We are only about 20km’s north of San Sebastian in Spain which is one of our favorite cities. We decided to check on the French side of the Basque country to see how France influenced Pinxtos which is one of our favorite foods.

The campground here had the most elaborate water play area we have ever seen. I expect you would need a platoon of lawyers to write the required waivers before you could use it in the US.

The only problem was Spain had spoiled us with perfect weather for so long that we didn’t check the weather forecast and about 100 km’s before we arrived it started raining heavily and didn’t let up. So our investigation of the influence of French cooking on Basque cuisine will have to wait.

May 7, 2022 Orio SP

Today is going to be short and sweet. We decided to take advantage of the excellent facilities here at Orio Kanpina to take care of some chores. So today consisted of cleaning the inside of François, and wash our clothes.

The highlight of the day was a trip into town to pick up a light load of groceries. Otherwise we spent the remainder of the day lounging around watching the Spanish families enjoying their weekend, and watching movies on Netflix.

May 6, 2022 Orio SP

We picked Orio for our destination because we like the campground, but also because it is a convenient place to visit San Sebastian-Donostia. This is our second time here, last time San Sebastian was one of our surprises of Spain. Neither of us had really heard much about it, and we really enjoyed it. It was our first exposure to the Basque Pinxtos, which are small bite sized sandwiches which we really enjoyed. Ton remembers the Pinxtos in San Sebastian as the best she had in Spain. Ton often says that the real test of a place is if the second visit is as good as the memories of the first. We were going to test that today.

The weather was much better than forecast so that was a good first step in the test. The stroll down to the waterfront was pleasant, and the beach was pretty, though less crowded than last time because it is about 15 degrees cooler. To make up for the lack of crowds there was some cool beach art in the sand. Our primary target for the day was the old town and Pinxtos. We spent about an hour exploring the old town looking for the perfect Pinxto spot. The old town here has a very nice character and is a great place to stroll and people watch. We enjoyed ourselves, and both of us noticed that for the first time since we left Paris, we heard other Americans as we walked down the street.

We really liked strolling around the streets of the old town searching for the perfect Pinxtos bar.

The place we settled on for Pinxtos did not disappoint. The big change from last time is that they no longer put the Pinxtos right on the bar and you go along and pick what you want self-service. Now they are under plexiglass, and someone has to pick them for you. We assume this is because of covid.

The entrance to our Pinxtos bar, it was as delicious as we remembered.

The bottom line on San Sebastian, is that it passed the second visit test. We were not as aggressive in our plans as the first trip when we explored both sides of the river, and climbed the hill above town to the fort. But, we enjoyed strolling through downtown and the old town, and the Pinxtos were still delicious.

The church in the old town of San Sebastian. Ton took the street photo above with the Cathedral in the background from the steps of this church.

Mission accomplished we headed back to the campground. What a difference a day makes. When we left the campground it was mostly empty. Today is Friday and when we got back from our trip to San Sebastian the place was rapidly filling with Spanish families. By the end of the evening the place was nearly full. There is a live band playing on the beach, the population has gone from mostly seniors, to young families with kids, and all of the grills at the campground are going full tilt at 9pm.

Cool street art in Orio, the scales of the fish are Sardine cans, and the gold heads and tails of the fish are from the tops of the sardine cans.

We are enjoying it, so we are planning to spend another day to enjoy the weekend scene.

May 5, 2022, Orio SP

In honor of Cinco de Mayo we decided to move to a Spanish speaking country. The next stop on our plan is Galicia in Northern Spain. Last night we had a debate as to whether to get on the road and jump down to Spain where rain is forecast for the next couple of days, or stay in the Bourdeaux region in France where the weather is supposed to be perfect. After a lot of debate Spain won.

François departing Chateau Marquis de Vauban.

The drive today was about 330km’s that was uneventful. It took a little longer than planned because we ran into a full on urban traffic jam getting around Bourdeaux. It took roughly an hour to cover about 18km’s (12 miles). After getting out of Bourdeaux our route followed the A63 which is like an interstate, but with tolls. The key is that it is only tolled in some areas. So Greta would jump on the A63 when it was free and then have us use local roads that ran parallel when it was tolled. By doing that it saved us €27 in tolls over about 200km’s. Just as I congratulated her for doing a good job, she suddenly decided to route us right thru the heart of Bayonne and Biarritz where we slowed down to a crawl. When I chastised her for her bad judgement, she retorted that if I wasn’t such a cheap skate and willing to pay a toll we would be tooling down the A63 at 95kph instead of crawling thru Biarritz at 15kph.

A nice side road in France on our trip to Spain today.

We arrived in Orio Spain about 3pm. We are in a campground that we had fond memories from our first trip to Spain. It is a small town with a nice beach and a relatively modern city center. The old town is quite small and completely dominated by modern buildings and infrastructure all around it. Despite that we enjoy the vibe of the place.

One of our favorite things about Spain is the sense of family and community you see when everyone comes out in the evening for a stroll and conversation.

This is Basque country thru and thru. There are virtually no Spanish signs in town. The conversations are again almost exclusively in Basque, even amongst the children and walking around town we heard as much English as Spanish being spoken. Basque is a tongue twister of a language and Ton and I had fun trying to pronounce the names on the signs.

Ton said the laundry on the balconies reminded her of Hong Kong. The sign is for a fruit stand.

October 6, 2018 Pamplona SP

Today was an almost day. We were both very much looking forward to Pamplona. It had a great reputation. Ron is a huge fan of Hemingway who loved Pamplona, and Ton had read a lot of good things about the town, we were both excited.

It’s not that there was anything wrong with Pamplona, it is a very beautiful and interesting city, but our expectations were very high. Yesterday St. Sebastian wowed us because we had no expectations and it was a great city. I think today was the opposite.

The day started with a quick drive over the mountains to Pamplona. We crossed the highest pass we have seen yet in Europe at a little over 2000 ft. The road was good and we were in Pamplona before we knew it. That was the first problem as we had planned to stop at a grocery on the way into town, and we were in town before we knew it, so we missed the grocery stop. It should have been no problem because the aire was supposed to have a grocery next to it. It turned out the grocery was a Carrefour Express which is like a 7-11. The cupboards were bare so we needed a real grocery. Google told us there was another grocery about 1/2 mile a way. Ton is a little under the weather so Ron went on a reconnaissance and it was indeed a real grocery and closer than a 1/2 mile. So the groceries are taken care of for a couple of days.

A cute cartoon showing the highlites of Pamplona.

We then headed into town to see the Citadel, Cathedral, and the old town. The citadel was another fort and quite a large one. It is quite well preserved and we took a quick walk thru, but decided to move on.

The Citadel, impressive and well preserved. Except for the modern apartment building.

We walked thru the old town near the end of Siesta so it was pretty quiet, and while it is the old street layout, it was for us a weird combination of grimy and modern. The streets are quite wide to allow for the running of the bulls which is what Pamplona is known for. The Cathedral was again ok, but we did not see the inside as they wanted €3 to get in. We ended the day with a visit to the Bull Ring to see the statue of Hemingway next to it. We almost visited the ring but they wanted €6 to walk thru.

Outside the bull fighting arena. Did not want to pay the entrance fee as there was no bull fighting, and we would not want to see that either.

We finally decided to have a dinner as the food is supposed to be good. Again the food was ok, the service was ok, and the location was good, with an amateur Basque band playing local music with some interesting wind instruments. All in all not awful, but not a memorable meal or visit.

Some Basque musicians waiting outside a church.

October 5, 2018 San Sebastian-Donostia SP

While François did not move today, we did. Today we did the trip to San Sebastian-Donostia that we had planned for yesterday. After a late start to the day we walked down to the train station in Orio and took the 30 minute ride into downtown San Sebastian. San Sebastian is the Spanish name and Donostia is the Basque name for the town. In the city Donostia is used much more prevalently than San Sebastian.

Donostia is not an old city, everything but a couple of churches dates from no earlier than the mid-1850’s. There are a couple of reasons for this, the first is the British pretty much burned the city to the ground in 1813 after they captured it from the French. The second reason is that the Spanish seem so far, to be a little less enamored with old buildings, and have less of a problem knocking down old buildings and replacing them with new buildings. Our sample size is small on this, but that is our observation so far.

A statue of Jesus overlooking the town from the top of the old fort.

The city has a very prosperous air to it with lots of upscale shops, and very nice pedestrian promenades thru town. It is an easy town to move around on foot. Eventually we made it to the old town, which was the original footprint of the town dating back to the 1200’s and corresponds to the area within the old fort. We climbed the hill above the old town to the remnants of the fort, where we had a very nice view over the town. The climb was probably a couple of hundred feet in elevation gain, but was worth it when we got to the top. From the top of the old fort you have a great panorama of the two harbors that make up San Sebastian-Donostia.

The Urumea River entering the Bay of Biscayne, the beach past the river is the surfing beach.

At one time San Sebastian was a major port and ship building site. Today its main industry is tourism, and it excels at that. We climbed back down to the old town to look for a tapas lunch. We wandered into a tavern where lunch is laid out on the bar, and consists of different miniature sandwiches and tapas. You grab a plate and move up and down the bar picking the food you want, when you have your plate full you grab a beer from the bartender, and head to a table. At the end you tell the bartender how many pieces you took (they pay attention), and how many beer you had, we had 8 pieces, and 3 beers. Ron was a little dehydrated from the climb.

The food is laid out across the bar, and you wander up there and help yourself.

Close up of a couple of the options at the bar.

After lunch we strolled around town for a while people watching, and having another stop at a local coffee shop. On the way back we stopped at the Cathedral, though we are getting a little jaded with Cathedrals. It was another fun day.

The surf beach up close. It is the same beach as the one above.

When we got back to Orio these guys were practicing, Orio is famous for it’s boat racing.

October 4, 2018 Orio SP

Plans change, sometimes by accident. We had planned to go to the nearby city of San Sebastian to do some sight seeing. Before we left we thought we could knock out a load of clothes. Well that did not work out the way we thought it would. The washer we used was the slowest washer we have run into in 3 continents, with nothing going wrong it took over an hour and half to complete it’s cycle. Then we put the clothes in the only dryer, and inserted our coin expecting it to tell us it would take 40 or 50 minutes to dry the clothes, it said 120 minutes, we thought how nice of them as no dryer could take 2 hours to dry a medium sized load of clothes, we were very wrong. It ran the full 2 hours, and then we hung the clothes out to finish drying. By the time the clothes washing was done it was too late to go to San Sebastian so we just relaxed for the rest of the day. It was a little frustrating, but at the end of the day we probably needed the rest, as we have been on the move constantly for 18 days.

In the early evening we walked into town to get some groceries (i.e. wine). It was a nice evening and we noticed that most of the town was out moving around, groups of children, adults, old men, and old women in groups conversing and enjoying themselves. It was the same last night, and is a nice cultural difference that we envied a little.

This guy was out the last two nights with these two bulls pulling a sled, not sure what the significance of the red mask is.

We came back to a nice conversation with our English neighbors. Ton made dinner and we drank some of our groceries before settling in to watch some Netflix Ron downloaded today in between washing and drying.

Yesterday was the fishing fleet of Orio, today it is the pleasure fleet.

October 3, 2018 Orio SP

After 16 days in France we finally reached Spain. We could have spent the entire trip in France, and enjoyed ourselves, but this trip was supposed to be about Spain. So we finally decided to head south.

Tree lined road found frequently in France, the leaves are starting to turn.

Except for one pit stop to put in just enough fuel to make it safely to Spain, we powered thru about 280km’s of driving. We only put in enough fuel to make it to Spain because France is now the holder of the record for the most expensive fuel in the EU. We have been paying €1.45 per liter, that is around $6.80 per gallon give or take. The first fuel station we saw in Spain had diesel at €1.15 per liter so we had a little celebration.

We had planned a photo op at the border between France and Spain, but it did not happen. The border was invisible, we did not know we had crossed into Spain until Ron noticed the road signs were suddenly in Spanish, and Basque. There was not even a sign welcoming us to Spain.

Ron sitting down at the kitchen table/drivers seat.

We had a nice drive down the coast to a small fishing village called Orio. We are parked a couple hundred yards from a very nice beach, surrounded by very tall hills on both sides. In fact guys parajump from the hills above the beach and circle around for 10 or 15 minutes before landing next to the RV park.

Parachutist coming in for a landing next to the beach.

In the evening we walked into the town proper, and kept looking for the old town, all we saw were modern condo’s and wide new streets. This area has been having a second home boom in the last decade or so, and the construction is very modern, quite different than France. After wandering down to the old fishing port we finally caught a glimpse of the old town, but it is tiny compared to the modern town.