The title is a bit of a lie. We actually spent 36 hours in Bilbao on our way to San Sebastian. Nevertheless we crammed a weekend worth of Bilbao in. We got an after work 7:30pm flight from London to Bilbao landing at 10:40pm. This was our first Vueling flight and it did not seem like a budget airline in the least, despite only spending £33 on the journey. We especially enjoyed the £3 ice cold cans of Mahou. A welcome contrast from the usually tepid £5 cans of Heineken sold on Ryanair and EasyJet.
Getting to Bilbao for a weekend
Bilbao might be one of the most weekend friendly destinations we’ve been to. We were still seated on the plane when I ordered a €20 Uber to our hotel. 7Kale B&B in Casco Viejo (or Old Town) was only 13 minutes away. We were through immigration in a flash and we got to the designated Uber space in the airport parking lot just as the driver arrived. It was a thing of beauty and might go down in history as our best airport landing to date.
The drive is only 20 minutes to the old town and comes with a great view as you descend from the top of the hills down a winding road into the town. Our keys were waiting for us on the counter at the hotel when we got in. We dropped our bags and were straight back out for a few minutes past 11pm. What a result.
For the last week of each August, Bilbao puts on a nine day party called La Semana Grande. This translates to ‘the big week’. It was pretty apparent that people were, indeed, having a big week. We were many rounds of drinks behind the crowds in the streets. We downloaded an app to track all of the festivities and the timings of the various attractions for La Semana Grande. On our first night we were too late to take advantage of this very full agenda.
Our first night in Bilbao
We walked about 10 steps to Bar Urbieta for our first drink, which was laughably inexpensive. The bar itself was nothing to write home about but every bar had people spilling out into the street so it didn’t really matter. The festival vibe was everywhere.
Around the corner we stopped at Taberna Ardibeltz for an Estrella Galicia on tap and a delicious slice of jamon & truffle tortilla. Even though this bar was visibly more upmarket than the last, the order came in at only €8. It started pouring rain so everyone crammed inside. We sprinted to the dive bar Ormaetxe over the road where we had our first Basque cider of the trip. Directly over the road we had a couple of bottles of Estrella Galicia at Bizitza. So concluded our first night of bar hopping within a single block. Not a bad first night given how late we arrived.
Starting our Bilbao weekend
We started our weekends first morning at Bilbao’s La Ribera Market, hoping to grab some breakfast at a market-stall-come-restaurant. Unlike most Spanish cities, Bilbao’s market was entirely grocery focused, and no such offering existed.
It was about 10am and the city was still very much asleep as we walked towards La Semana Grande’s many pop up bars. These were all themed in some nonsensical way (Halloween? Harry Potter?). We stopped at Charamel Gozotegia on our way through for a coffee and a pastry.
Right in the heart of the La Semana Grande arena was a larger-than-life figure of Marijaia. Marijaia is the mascot of the festival. Universally loved yet somewhat darkly set on fire in a ceremony at the end of the week.
We had a wander and saw the beginnings of both a group chess match and the fried cod cook-off. With the main party of the weekend evidently kicking off much later, we decided to go explore Bilbao.
This may have been a mistake, because we wound up missing the entirety of the scheduled festivities… but we had a great day exploring Bilbao.
A trip to Indautxu and the Guggenheim
We crossed the bridge to Indautxu and walked to the world renowned Guggenheim. Shiny and oddly modern, and a piece of art unto itself. Out front there was a giant dog sculpture covered in flowers. Obviously. We considered going in, but we prefer our culture served on plates and in glasses, so we headed to El Huevo Frito for a couple of beers and a tortilla. It was 12pm and this was the beginning of the rest of our day in Bilbao. Bar hopping for pintxos and drinks.
Next we hit El Globo for some black pudding and red pepper pintxos and a couple of ciders. We only stayed for one and walked to Cafe Iruna. We had passed this bar on our way to the Guggenheim and earmarked to return. I’m so glad we did.
The interior of this bar is all tiled. A giant bar sits in the middle of the room for patrons to stand up and lean. It couldn’t have been more Basque… even if the tiles brandished the cities of Andalucia. We had a couple of cañas (which are actually large beers in Basque Country, but small beers in the rest of Spain) and then headed back towards the festivities in Casco Viejo.
Back to Casco Viejo
We walked past the arena and the pop-up bars of La Semana Grande and headed to Plaza Nueva, a lively and buzzing square filled with bars, restaurants, and people. Here we found Gure-Toki where we had some primo pintxos. They were were still very reasonable in price, but seriously next level. This is where I had my first ever (proper) glass of txakoli. Txakoli is a Basque regional wine; light in colour with a natural carbonation. While the txakolis of San Sebastian would prove to be better, this was an eye opener to me in terms of the style.
We had a couple of other drinks in Plaza Nueva, including a couple of txakolis – served in plastic cups – at Victor Montes. I guess the plaza gets hit with a lot of broken glass. The bar was very old school grand and had black and white floor tiles.
Just outside of La Plaza Nueva, we stopped at Cafe Bar Bilbao for their specialty fried calamari and another caña.
We were rapidly approaching siesta hour, and started to head back towards the hotel, stopping off at the bar across the street from us, Gorde, for a quick beer. We watched as a parade of people dressed in red played music in the street, armed with drinks from the many bars nearby.
Given the energy and the vibe we decided to skip siesta, though I did manage to squeeze in a quick micronap when we went to drop off our shopping from the brilliant illustration-led Atakontu.
With the parade still going, we grabbed a caña and a jamon sandwich at the bar directly beneath the hotel, Txiriboga Taberna. We looped back to Charamel Gozotegia for fuel in the form of espresso and cookies.
By this time, about 5:30pm, the city was noticeably quieter than an hour earlier. Turns out the siesta is as late as their mornings are. We had just had some espressos and felt committed to powering through, so we persevered and went to Baster for a couple of vinos.
Baster was more top market than the other bars we had been to. Nevertheless it was still outrageously good value, with their most expensive red by the glass coming in at €3. I went for a Rioja (€2.30) and Sam had a vermut. I could have tried many more of these wines as they all looked and sounded amazing, but we moved on to La Semana Grande’s bars instead.
An evening of festivities
Here we got a couple of plastic cups on a deposit. I can’t remember how much they cost but in keeping with the theme I’m sure it was very reasonable. It started pouring rain and hordes of people clamoured under the tent we had fortuitously been standing under. Everyone was having a great time.
Sam was trying to wean me off full meals and into the Basque style of constant snacking, but on our first night we passed a steak place with some unbelievable looking sides of beef hanging in the window and the seed had been planted. We had to go to Sugarra. The steak was served sizzling on a little mini grill when it arrived. We watched from the terrace as another band paraded down the street playing music.
After dinner we crossed the river to the Bilbao la Vieja neighbourhood. We bounced around a few jam-packed hipster bars and watched the fireworks celebrating the end of another day of La Semana Grande in Bilbao.
I don’t even know where we went after returning to the centre of it all in Casco Viejo. The rainy streets were so packed with people having drinks that anyone could have bought theirs from any bar nearby. We had a couple more in that area and decided the scene would be even more entertaining to watch from our balcony above. This was a grave error as I was asleep within two minutes. On the balcony.
We had an 8:30am train anyway so it wasn’t the end of the world that we were asleep at midnight. The party certainly carried on without us, and we saw many people still awake from the night before on our way to the station the next morning.
The end of a weekend in Bilbao
A weekend in Bilbao is a fantastic and fun little gateway into Basque culture. It’s completely unique to the rest of Spain and full of its own conventions and traditions. If you spend any time in the region this becomes apparent very quickly. For example Basque Country has its own distinct lettering which you won’t see anywhere else in the world, but has been adopted by the entirety of the region. The weather could be better than the rest of Spain, but equally this keeps hordes of tourists at bay. Even with La Semana Grande and a relatively last-minute booking, our hotel was right smack in the centre of the old town and only £80 per night.
We walked six minutes to the old town train station to board a leisurely 2h 45m train through the Basque countryside the next morning to continue our eating and drinking adventure in San Sebastian. San Sebastian is next level but with its reputation comes cost so it is not as good value as Bilbao. If you are heading to San Sebastian, Bilbao is the perfect place to start your journey and it is well worth spending a day if not a weekend. Given the frequency and price of flights we will definitely return in the future.
