Bilbao & the Basque coast is a tour that will leave you wanting more

It was a travel company's mistake in Iceland that first opened my eyes to the exquisite treat of travelling with a private guide. Since that adventure with the stalwart Viking Halle, the annual girls' trip has splurged where possible on local experts to give us deeper, more meaningful experiences than we can create ourselves ... even with our prodigious combined travel experience.

Mikel and Ikusnahi Travel now join our list of precious memories. If you are heading to the BasqueCountry and are up for investing in something beyond the ordinary, these are the guys to call.

In Basque, the company name means a desire or willingness to see; a perfect summary of the ethos of this born-and-bred locally team. We peppered Mikel with questions all day, ranging across areas as diverse as modern politics, geology, religious history, architecture, food and art, and he never missed a beat. Once he realised we were curious about pretty much everything, he was a steady font of information. In fact, had we booked Ikusnahi for Day 1, instead of Day 3, I suspect we might have been trying to arrange a second session in the same trip. We all came away with loads of ideas for the next excursion.

The one we booked, however, is probably the most obvious for the first-time visitor to San Sebastián (Donostia in the native Basque): A visit to the Guggenheim in Bilbao, plus a few charming villages along the coast.  Sure, you can do that on your own, but you'll have to get to the bus terminal, take the long and tedious bus ride, make your way to the museum, deal with the ticket queue and then make your way home. Without any picturesque coastal drives.

Instead, Mikel picked us up from our hotel in a generously sized van that gave the four of us room to sprawl. He filled the hour to Bilbao with fascinating overview information about Basque history and culture, noted points of interest along the way, and prepared us for the striking first sight of the museum as you emerge from a tunnel. It's one of the most photographed buildings in the world, but nothing can really prepare you for the outrageous, awe-inspiring statement it makes, dominating the scene like some alien princess' castle.

Guggenheim Bilbao
We hopped out right in front and had our first look while Mikel parked the van. I knew that architect Frank Gehry chose the undulating shapes and metal scales to mimic the fish that made Bilbao's fortune. It's one thing to know, another thing to experience. As the clouds scud across the sky, they
reflect on the metal and the whole building seems to writhe like a school of cod dancing away from Basque fishermens' nets. It's extraordinary. Mikel walked us around the outside while explaining the history of the town, the building, and how they influenced each other. Today, it's hard to imagine that this vibrant, art-filled riverwalk, enlivened by clarinet-playing buskers and within view of a long line of gracious mansions, offices and public spaces, was once a derelict industrial district. And then, though the magic of Ikusnahi, we slipped in the riverside group entrance ... skipping a queue that stretched at least 500 metres by the time we left.

To my great surprise, the inside is just as good as the outside. Not just architecturally. This is a joyous, fascinating and carefully curated collection, presented in a way to make it accessible to all.

Frequent readers will be dropping their jaws in shock at this point. Yes, I dislike modern art. I've never been to a modern art museum that filled me with anything but a desire to leave quickly. (Unless I'm heading to the Tate's restaurant. Excellent views.) Until now. I could have stayed for at least another hour. For me, that's a revolutionary statement.

To read more about why the Guggenheim is so magical, check out the next story, when my guest blogger Suzy Christopher will offer her take.

But we couldn't stay. We had a date with a movie set.

Zumaia
Turns out Dragonstone is on the Basque coast. Game of Thrones fans (three of the four on our trip) will swoon with jealousy. The familiar set is actually a pastiche of two sites. Gaztelugatxe, a small islet off the coast, is connected to the mainland by a madly-winding stone bridge that ... on television ... leads up to the brooding castle and has been the site of so many dramatic conversations in Season 7. The atmospheric, cliff-lined beach lying at the foot of those stairs that is home to the cave with the White Walker paintings and the dragon glass hoard is actually in Zumaia. It would have been impossible to do both and our final destination for the day, as they're separated by about 80 kilometres of coast with no fast road connections. So we headed for Zumaia.

The reason the producers picked this place is immediately obvious. It's a geological blockbuster. Famous for a particular rock formation called flysch, these layers of compacted sediment were pushed upwards in a violent meeting of continents millions of years ago. The result is other-wordly, jagged strips of the rock, as if the cliffs had been constructed of giant sheets of blackened, upthrust mille feuille pastry. Horizontal lines of stone continue out to sea and cut back from the cliff tops. On the heights, however, they're softened by rich green grasses and shrubs. The tiny, ancient chapel of San Telmo perches on the headland, a waypoint on the ancient pilgrimage route to Campostella.

This was the second place we had to leave too soon. Zumaia deserves a day. A morning to scramble down onto that magnificent beach. Time to poke around the shops in the charming town below the cliffs before a lingering lunch. Then an afternoon's hike along the cliff tops.

But there was more to do. We headed east on the N634: a beautiful, winding thread suspended between cliff base and water. I suspect you could spend many happy hours simply driving this coast. We stopped half an hour later in Getaria, where a picture-postcard medieval village clambered up a hillside above a sheltered harbour.

Getaria

There's a unique Romanesque church here, built so that the whole place slopes precipitously back and down from the altar. Legend has it that the ruling nobles, parachuted in from Spain, insisted on the unusual architecture so that they'd always be physically above everyone else. I've never seen another church like it. Nor have I seen another place where the church actually bridges the main street: you walk through a tunnel beneath it towards the harbour, able to peer through grates into the crypt.

Cobbled streets wind past shops, prosperous old merchants' houses and nobles' palaces. This was the home town of Juan Sebastián Elcano, the first ship's captain to circumnavigate the globe, and they've honoured him with two statues. One stands proudly above the harbour, looking out to sea. Another stands before the town hall, looking South towards Spain. Is that a smirk of superiority the sculptor crafted into his face? Probably. The town's other famous son is fashion designer Cristobal Balenciaga. There's a museum to him here. Yet again, a place that could have beguiled us for hours.

The real point of our visit, however, was a late lunch. (The exploration came after.)

On a coast already famous for its cuisine and its seafood, Getaria is where the locals come to eat fish. It's also known for some of the finest txakoli, the gently sparkling local white wine. (Indeed, the Txomin Etxaniz we had here was the best of the trip.)

We ate at Kaia Kaipe, where the highly-polished wooden panelling and the expansive views over the harbour made it feel like we were inside a luxury super yacht rather than an ancient stone building. For the first, and only, time on our trip we were entirely surrounded by locals ... including a family group of about 30 around one enormous table, celebrating a couple's anniversary with gifts and songs.

Two decades ago, when I was still a full-blooded American pursuing high-intensity tourism, I couldn't have imagined taking two hours out of the heart of a sightseeing day to linger over lunch. Nor paying for a private guide to share than down time. Now, I see it as an essential part of the experience. Mikel knew the menu and the owners. Explained the local nuances. Ordered stuff that was off the menu, including an enormous whole turbot the five of us shared as our main course. We'd been doing a great job exploring local cuisine, naturally. But eating with a local made the experience that much richer. And the turbot ... which had doubtless still been swimming happily the day before ... was exceptional.

By the time we finished our stroll around town and stopped in a gourmet shop to buy txakoli and some of the famed local salt, it was time to head back to Donostia. One last advantage of our own guide: he could drop us wherever we wished. The day had been so wonderful we weren't ready to head home. So Mikel dropped us at the Gintoneria (already covered here), where we plunged into another round of exotic cocktails and reviewed the wonders of our day.

Mikel gave us a glimpse of a whole new world. Every one of us agreed we're keen to return and discover more.