We spent the entire month of October in Spain! We didn’t intend to, but it just worked out that way. We really loved it and got to see so many different parts of the country. WW speaks Spanish and that went a long way towards us feeling a kinship towards Spain!
We flew from London to Bilbao.
We only stopped here for a couple of days as our real goal was heading to San Sebastián, but we enjoyed our first taste of Basque Country and… pintxos!!! Pintxos is pronounced “pinchos” and it is essentially Basque tapas. The word literally means “spiked” which refers to the most common format of skewered stuff on toast, but of course a pintxo can be basically anything.
We explored beautiful plazas and encountered a group of singing men both nights we were there. We discovered Spanish staples like jamón and tortilla (not flour tortillas, but in Spain refers to an egg omelette kind of like a frittata), and of course ate lots of pintxos. Our pintxo highlight in Bilbao was a spot called Gure Toki.
But there was so much more good food to come in San Sebastián…
Hello from Spain! Little did we know that this was going to be one of the most visually rich and inspiring months of WW’s life!
Our hotel room in the old town had this very romantic window that felt very ~European~ to us.
We also discovered torreznos, a fried bacon-like rasher of pork belly with crackling attached. Yum!
We went to San Sebastián next!
We booked a food tour for our very first night in Donostia-San Sebastián (Donostia is Basque, San Sebastián is Spanish). We wanted to get to know the food culture and in reflection now, the tour was a little pricey, but still great.
The four days we spent in San Sebastián were focused on eating. We ate pintxos every day multiple times a day. While San Sebastián is famous for having the highest number of Michelin stars per capita in the world, we didn’t do any full-on sit-down restaurants – we thought that there was so much deliciousness to discover in pintxos alone.
We also explored Gros, a chill arts-focused neighborhood east of the river from old town, went to the beach to watch a man draw elaborate art into the sand every single day during low tide, and went to a yoga class.
We also attended a lovely local concert! Our food tour guide is part of a monthly live music club and she gave us her ticket. We got to listen to some very melancholic blues-y Basque music by Jabier Muguruza.
In Basque Country, and especially in San Sebastián, there is a strong tavern crawl culture. You get 1 or 2 pintxos and a drink, and then you move on to the next spot. This is a great way to try soooo many different things.
We also learned that while every place has ready-made pintxos you can see on the shelf at the bar, almost every place also has hot pintxos available on a written menu that will come out of the kitchen. We found the hot pintxos to be consistently better dishes.
And also – it’s everyone for themselves in tavern culture! In a busy taverna you don’t line up politely to get your order in. You assertively fight your way to the prized spot at the front of the bar – and then when you get your food and drink, you free up that spot for someone else.
And also! It is very normal to see napkins and skewers tossed on the ground next to the bar. This originated as a practice to keep dirty napkins off of the bar where all the food is, and people still do it now even though all the food is behind glass on the bar. Sometimes there is a little trough at the foot of the bar to toss your trash into.
San Sebastián is where we fell in love with vermouth, and where WW learned to love olives. The best non-alcoholic drinks were mosto (wine pre-fermentation, basically fancy grape juice) garnished with an orange slice and an olive, and Bitter Kas garnished with same.
We headed south to Madrid for a few days next.
When you travel long-term, sometimes you land in a place where your mood happens to be “stay in and chill out” rather than “squeeze the marrow out of life”. Our hostel in Madrid was lovely and we did explore quite a bit, but we also went and got some Chinese comfort food, did yoga, and ran some errands.
We saw a wonderful flamenco show which completely ignited a passion for flamenco (more on that as we headed further south to Andalucía), checked out Reina Sofia Art Museum, saw a sunset from Temple of Debod, and bought some Spanish-made shoes!
Every corner of Madrid is seemingly decorated with art – whether it was street art, or illustrated ceramic tiles to declare what street you were on.
Temple of Debod is a very popular sunset spot in the city!
WW was very pleased with her new Spanish-made red shoes.
Every corner of Madrid was seemingly decorated with art.
We spent just one night in Segovia to see an awesome Roman aqueduct.
The scale and majesty of the Roman aqueduct was awesome in the original sense of the word. The city of Segovia was a little touristy, but we still enjoyed ourselves. We ate suckling pig, a local specialty, and visited the Alcazar, a medieval castle.
We couldn’t get enough of how cool the aqueduct was!
Suckling pig was pretty crazy. It was usually served with fries, salad, and a salty broth that you absolutely drench your whole plate in.
Alcazar de Segovia looked especially beautiful lit up at night!
We spent about a week in Barcelona, a city we had heard so much about!
Barcelona was a city we’d been wanting to visit for so long, and we still feel like we only scratched the surface.
It’s a city with a fascinating urban planning history – it has a smallish old city, surrounded by a huge swath of octagonal city blocks known as the Eixample. It also has some amazing art nouveau architectural works, especially by Antoni Gaudí: Casa Vicens was definitely our favourite (though as we discovered later on, was essentially a modern interpretation of Islamic architecture like Alhambra), though we enjoyed seeing Park Guell and Sagrada Familia as well. We didn’t go inside Casa Mila or Casa Batllo, but definitely want to visit Casa Batllo as it looks crazy reptilian!
We also met up with David & Gemma, a couple we met on our Landmannalaugur hiking trip in Iceland! We enjoyed more vermuterías, saw Lianne La Havas in concert, ate paella, and took a few tango classes.
It was difficult to get pictures that illustrated the scale of the place, but we also visited the Barcelona City Museum to see the Roman ruins of the “original” Barcelona from the first century, which was incredibly cool.
Casa Vicens was one of our favourite Gaudí works that we saw! The use of colour and pattern was super inspiring.
We also enjoyed seeing Sagrada Familia – it was very difficult to get tickets and we only got in the last slot of the day, so didn’t get to spend as much time inside as we’d have liked.
The interior was beautiful – we would have liked to attend a service here but had heard that with it being first-come-first-serve, you would have had to arrive at 6:30AM!
Paella isn’t unique to Barcelona, but we figured we had to try it at least once in Spain!
We had wanted to see Lianne La Havas but all her tour dates were sold out… except for this twice-rescheduled date in Barcelona.
Because we had tickets to see the show, we got to see inside the Palau de Musica Catalan, an incredibly beautiful, ornate art nouveau venue.
Hello from Park Guell! It was a very beautiful park, but had a kind of sad, Arrested Development, unfulfilled-dreams housing development vibe.
Just 3 lizards 😀
We took a few tango classes in Barcelona which was super fun! Definitely a different dance than hustle! We also enjoyed a nearby vermutería after classes.
We made a quick stop over in Seville!
We were only in Seville for a short time, but it left quite an impression on us. Unfortunately, our visit did not go as planned. On the day we arrived, Jonny got food poisoning and spent 2 out of 3 of our days there inside recovering at the hotel. WW got to explore the city and soak in our first exposure to the beauty of Andalusia.
There were so many lovely tiles and vibrant colours everywhere, and quite a few buskers too!
Even the bottoms of balconies were decorated with tiles!
Our view over lunch 🙂
We caught the tail end of some Flamenco buskers at Plaza de España!
Some very groovy buskers that WW found while Jonny was busy ejecting his stomach contents.
We managed to catch a Flamenco show after Jonny recovered, but it was slightly lacklustre, unfortunately. The tourists around us were talking throughout the show, and the show itself felt very formal (and didn’t have the contagious vibe we had previously experienced).
The colour palette of Andalucía was on point.
Then we spent a week in Granada!
We loved Granada! We stayed in a fantastic hostel which offered free dinners, and we found it easy to make friends. Experiencing the history of this city that has been a multicultural hub for centuries was very interesting to us.
We absolutely adored visiting Alhambra, and seeing all of the Islamic influences on the city’s food and architecture. We had barely managed to get tickets (they were sold out two months in advance) but it was incredibly worth it, especially the Nasrid Palace. Beautifully preserved Islamic architecture is truly something to behold, and the sheer amount of beauty crammed into every corner was mind-boggling! There was incredible tile work (math nerds click here) and plasterwork everywhere.
Our Flamenco obsession continued to grow, and we saw 2 more shows – one in a cueva gitana (Romani family cave venue), and one in a traditional Peña.
Jonny went on a hike with some friends from our hostel!
We have soooo many photos from Alhambra. It was absolutely stunning! Please go to the Google Photos album and enjoy it!
Just outside the venue of where we saw the best Flamenco of our whole trip. It was at a smaller theatre but Flamenco being an improvised dance & musical art means that sometimes the quality of the performance depends on the performer’s ability to “dig deep”, and at Peña la Plateria, the performers really did – it was fantastic!
We saw a Flamenco performance in a cueva (a cave home!), the traditional venues of Flamenco Gitano. All of the performers were part of the same family, and WW got brought up on stage (we were perfect targets sitting front and centre)!
Jonny in the Nasrid palace in Alhambra
A comparison of the tiles at Casa Vicens (in Barcelona) and the tiles at Alhambra (in Granada). You can clearly see where Gaudí took his inspiration from!
After Granada, we set out to Ronda for a 3 day bike trip!
We got a self-guided tour from Hike & Bike Sierras, a company that helps plan custom bike tours for you. They provided the bikes, bike bags, and also fully planned GPS routes!
Unfortunately, the forecast was very rainy… but our routes were planned through mostly very quiet, no-traffic country roads. But it was a very wet experience!
Ronda → Alcala del Valle → Setenil de las Bodegas
Day 1
Rainy day! It wasn’t too bad for the most parts as we were mostly alone on paved country roads. We had lunch in Alcala del Valle, an adorable white village.
We did get stuck in the stickiest mud of all time which had washed out from nearby olive orchards and had to spend considerable time de-gunking our tires!
At one point on our ride, we passed a beautiful estate in a nature park, and an adorable cat came trotting out to say hello! We ended our day in Setenil de las Bodegas, a beautiful “pueblo blanco” set in a gorge – many buildings are build directly under into the cave and rock faces which was so cool!
Setting off on Day 1 sporting our new rain gear – already very wet!
A very satisfying view of Setenil de las Bodegas at the end of our difficult day!
Setenil de las Bodegas!
WW’s bike after an extremely muddy section of the trail.
A good example of the buildings built right into the cliff edge. There are many more photos in the album!
Setenil de las Bodegas → Ruins of Acinipo → Montejaque
Day 2
Biking out of Setenil de las Bodegas, we took a route through the beautiful old village. It was still very very rainy…
We biked up the hill to the Ruins of Acinipo, which was an ancient Roman city with an incredible amphitheatre and view. We had it basically to ourselves in the rain!
We had dinner arranged for us by the company at Molino del Santo – it was delicious and the our waiter was very charming. Maybe one of our best restaurant meals in Spain!
A cork tree that has been harvested! They looked so naked. We passed lots of these on this day.
The roman amphitheatre (and a very small Jonny dancing on the stage). So cool! The seats were carved directly out of the quarry, and the stone was used to make the “scaenae frons” (the backdrop structure).
A very tired hungry lad who is very excited for a large, fancy meal!
So many beautiful vistas (when the rain cleared long enough to allow it to be seen)
Montejaque → Arriate → Ronda
Day 3
The sun came out on this day!!!!!! Being dry never felt so good! We checked out a cave/waterfall and the water level was soooo high from all the rain we had been getting.
It was a reasonably short but pretty hilly day – we got lunch in Arriate (in the sun!!!) We ended back in Ronda and took the train to Malaga where we were flying out to Lisbon.
WW next to the cave/waterfall (water is not very visible in this picture)
We finished!! We were very glad to be done after a tremendously moist couple of days.
Then we spent a day in Málaga, where we flew out to Portugal!
We spent our one day in Málaga wisely by sampling a few local specialties – including churros, served with a rich cup of hot chocolate for a very decadent breakfast.
We also tried espetos, which are sardines grilled over an olive wood fire (traditionally on a boat on the beach), served simply with salt and lemon. One of our best meals in Spain to end October on a high note!
For more photos, check out this Google Photos album.
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Wow such a great month! I love Spain also but have mostly been around Barcelona! Reading this makes me want to explore more! Love the variety of things you guys get up to! And WW’s cheery color combo outfits!!!
Thanks Tara 🙂 I think you would really love the rest of Spain!
Looks like we’ll have to go check Spain out!! What a month packed full of adventure and good food!
If you go we have so many recommendations! The food in Basque country was unreal!
I spent 5 days in Barcelona in 2018. Such a bright, eclectic city!
We loved Barcelona but definitely felt like San Sebastián and Granada were highly underrated!! If you ever go back to Spain you should check those cities out!!