A Pilgrim’s Road Trip Along the Camino de Santiago
By Max Milano, Travel Writer & Photographer
It has been a long, tough road to get to La Rioja, Spain’s premier wine region, but it’s been worth it. We’ve set our GPS to avoid tolls so we can really see the country. The freeways in Spain are antiseptic and empty, skirting small towns and cities like a gerrymandered political map.
We want to see the little towns where no one goes out during siesta, because the heat comes down like a punishment from God. Nothing is open. Only the locals know when the bar or panadería will unlock its doors.
It’s been a twisty road up from Bilbao, then down again into the valley of Vitoria-Gasteiz, and up once more into the jagged peaks of the Sierra Cantábrica. The barren rocks of the Palomares peaks rise against the sky like the teeth of a monstrous shark, petrified back in the days when sharks were the size of mountains. We’ve passed through wild pine forests where only wolves and Basques thrive to arrive here, the so-called Balcony of La Rioja.
It’s not a balcony, but a dirt track off the road halfway up a Cantabrian peak. The view is toward the Castilian side, where the last sliver of the Basque Country loses its northern forests, wolves, and elves, and begins to meld into the Mediterranean culture pressing against the sierras but unable to cross.
The view at first is primeval, something early man might have gasped at after wandering from the foggy forests near the Cave of Altamira by the Cantabrian Sea, over fine forested peaks, to stand here on this ledge. Below lies a promised land of short green shrubs, stretching as far as the eye can see toward a Mediterranean world that has tamed the earth into row upon row of vines, with hills capped by medieval villages and church towers.
The air is thick in the August heat, and the jagged, serrated rocks of Los Palomares make you want to rush down the mountains to the greener pastures below. As we descend, the fields reveal their treasure; grapes growing in neat rows, interrupted only by tiny medieval villages where everyone hides indoors from the heat, and teenagers meet in backyard pools because it’s too hot to think.
And then we see it. Frank Gehry at his best. Incongruous yet perfect, rising from the green vines, sheets of flowing polished metal, gleaming in the sun, shifting from silver to gold to the purple of wine. The Marqués de Riscal Bodega and Hotel. A modernist cathedral to wine in the heart of Rioja. The building is more Los Angeles than Spain, yet it belongs here.
A guard waves us away. You need a reservation.
We press on to the next town, Cenicero. The Ashtray. A medieval village surrounded by vineyards, crowned by a church of stone that looks as if it has always been here.
It’s 9:30 p.m., and the early dusk has brought the locals out. We drive up Cenicero’s only street and find ourselves in a scene straight out of a Goya painting of 18th-century peasant revelry. Old men sit on benches in the plaza, listening to a saxophonist play zarzuelas. Wine glasses in hand, drunks spill from the bars. Children dart and laugh like the saltimbanques from Picasso’s blue period.
These are not the polished, clinical visitors of a Frank Gehry landmark five minutes away. These are the salt of the earth, drunk on life and local tempranillo. They dance with old women leaning on canes, with men who have Down syndrome, with little people tossing balls in the air.
Maybe they’re just happy the sun is slipping behind the mountains, giving us an impossibly beautiful golden hour of layered peaks and vineyards spread below like a painting from God.
Bayonne
Many pilgrims start their Camino de Santiago journey in France. El Camino Francés, they call it. It begins on the French side of the Pyrenees. It continues inland to Pamplona, Logroño, and other towns along the foothills of the Picos de Europa until it reaches Santiago de Compostela.
We wanted a French start to our Camino too, but sticking to the coast. It’s unbearably hot in August on the inland side of the Picos. At least the coast might give us some relief.
We cross the border into France at Irún on the highway from Bilbao. No passport control. France greets us with an automated toll booth and a ten-kilometer increase in the speed limit.
We leave the highway at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, craving salty air, sand between our toes, and a bit of history. But thousands of Parisians had the same idea. All the parking lots are full. We press on to Biarritz along a French version of the CPH, with occasional views of beaches packed to the brim.
Biarritz is no better. Even the three-story parking structure at the casino is full. So we continue to Bayonne, slightly inland. The Parisians want sea, sand, and surf, so maybe Bayonne’s parking will be more forgiving.
We cross the river and park right by the water. It’s hot, but the river gives some relief. The old town lies on the other side, so we walk across a bridge lined with an incongruous mix of flags: Basque, Breton, Palestinian, and Israeli, all fluttering together in the sun. As I look down onto the water from the bridge, a speedboat pops from under it and a pair of bikini-clad Parisian girls on vacation wave and smile. Up ahead on the right riverbank, a huge 17th-century fort dominates the entry to the city, a French tricolor flutters on top like a decoration on a giant cake.
Bayonne’s old town is a jewel of late medieval architecture. Crooked half-timbered houses crowned by the twin towers of the cathedral. Chic shops, chic prices, and a sublime atmosphere. We find a small plaza beside the cathedral with a crêperie at one end and tables outside.
I approach the waiter and ask for a table for two in French. He replies in French, takes our order in French, and leaves. All in French. I sit back, elated. I’ve just passed the toughest test Americans face in France, lasting an entire restaurant interaction without the waiter switching to English.
The buckwheat crêpes with jambon and fromage are sublime, all washed down with ice cold bierre a pression.
When the cathedral bells chime, I realize how much quieter France is than Spain. The plaza is full of people eating, walking, and window-shopping, but conversations are whispers. Only the occasional Gallic grunt breaks the air. In Spain, you can hear people over the hills, shouting about their private lives, cursing the host, the Virgin Mary, and God himself.
After lunch, we wander the cobblestone streets. Every shop feels curated. There’s a bande dessinée comic store filled with Astérix, Lucky Luke, and Tintin. A knife shop selling the famous Basque folding knives. Basque culture is for sale everywhere, from berets to jamón.
We drive back toward the border to check out the last French town before you hit Spain: Hendaye. It has a long beach, and with the sun sinking, we might find parking.
The drive is magnificent. Past Saint-Jean-de-Luz, cliffs drop to the Atlantic and a château overlooks Hendaye’s sands.
The promenade in Hendaye is still crowded, but it thins near the far end. We find parking beside a seawall holding back the river that separates France from Spain. I walk to the edge and watch sailboats drift past, and the medieval skyline of Irún rising on the Spanish side. Irun’s cathedral dominates the heights, looming over the French beach. A stern, stone reminder of Spain’s austere past stares down at half-naked French beachgoers frolicking in the sand.
San Sebastian
We arrive in San Sebastián as the sun is setting. It’s almost ten o’clock and the paseo hour is in full swing. We park on the posh side, under the Queen Victoria Hotel, and walk toward La Concha beach. Boats bob in the bay. People stroll along the sand, now just silhouettes against the water in the fading light. Kids from all over Europe lean against the railings above the beach, admiring the scene and each other. French, German, American English, Venezuelan Spanish, it’s all here.
We head into the alleys of the old town. The bars are packed. You have to push your way through. Drunk women wheel prams with sleeping babies out of the bars. In Spain, no one blinks at a toddler parked against the counter while mom has a drink. We’ve seen babies propped atop bars at two in the morning, fast asleep while their mothers drink and flirt with bartenders.
ETA graffiti is everywhere in this part of town. Palestinian flags hang from lampposts. If there’s one thing uniting the Basque Country right now, it’s Palestine. We’ve seen that flag in the most remote corners, on hidden beaches, deep in the dark forests of the mountains around Bilbao.
We sit outside a gélateria for ice cream and espresso. Night falls, and we have to drive back to Bilbao. The highway between San Sebastián and Bilbao is madness in the dark, with twisting curves and wild shifts in the speed limit.
I glide along the highway to Bilbao through black forests and impossibly tall mountains on both sides. The Basques live in narrow valleys with barely any open ground. The full moon is out. Ahead, only black pines glowing silver in the moonlight, walls of trees rising until they merge with the night sky.
You have to be on your game to drive at 120 kilometers an hour here in the dark. Cars coming the other way keep their high beams on permanently. I can’t blame them, but they’re blinding. I use an old trick: switch on the fog lights. It lets me see the road without blinding oncoming drivers.
My AI DJ on Amazon Music is on fire tonight: Tomorrow Never Dies, I Am the Walrus, and Bowie’s Space Oddity back-to-back. The perfect soundtrack for this stretch of dark, twisting highway through the woods.
Bilbao appears below us as the road curls down from the mountains into the riverside. Our hotel is by the water, and you have to call the front desk to get the garage door open. A cop flashes his lights at us for blocking the street, but I point to the opening gate, and he drives off.
Back in the room, the drama of the late-night drunks drifts in through the window. A girl is crying. Her boyfriend is shouting. Glass breaks. The flood of languages carries on until dawn.
The Road to Rioja and Vitoria-Gasteiz
We start the day in Starbucks.
Before you judge, understand this: coffee in Spain is excellent, but it comes in cups so small they vanish in two sips. Sometimes you crave a mug so big you can swim in it. In Europe, Starbucks serves venti lattes in soup-bowl mugs. A liquid breakfast.
All the customers are Americans or English speakers. It’s only 7:30 a.m. We’ve got forest roads ahead, pushing south to Vitoria-Gasteiz and over the last jagged sierras that drop us into La Rioja.
The Basque vertical forests fall away to a flat, hot valley. Bald peaks of the Cantabrian Sierras glisten in the haze, but here it’s 40 degrees Celsius and the streets are empty.
The outskirts of Vitoria-Gasteiz resemble a modern American college town after a zombie apocalypse. No one outside. Too hot. Only mad dogs, and all that.
We park and wander in the heat through the plaza of an apartment complex. Google Maps promised a Roman ruin here, but it’s buried under the park to protect it from kids until some future archaeologist digs it out.
Earlier that day, we’d left the freeway to visit a Roman-walled city just outside town. The boy manning the entrance was asleep behind the counter. We decided to wait out his lunch hour by driving down to a shady picnic area nearby that stood beside a slow, wandering river, under a millennial olive tree, and a medieval bridge. Reeds waved in the cool water. The bridge frames the scene like a movie prop.
Hemingway wrote of scenes like this in The Sun Also Rises, fish wrapped in river reeds, pulled from Basque streams. Sometimes it’s good to slow down.
After our picnic, we returned to the Roman site, but the boy was gone and the gate was locked. Better luck next time.
Vitoria-Gasteiz is the capital of the Basque Country, and today must be some holiday. Everyone is in town and dressed in traditional Basque clothes. The men wear black jackets tied at the waist, white shirts, and gray handkerchiefs patterned like Scottish tartan. Feet wrapped in white cloth, laced tight in black. Even the children are dressed up. The streets are packed. No parade, no music, just the gathering.
Too hot to investigate further. We push on toward La Rioja, waiting on the other side of the black, jagged peaks of the Cantabria.
Frank Gehry and La Rioja
We score reservations for the Frank Gehry–designed bodega of Marqués de Riscal forty-five minutes before the tour. This part of La Rioja is the Rioja Alavesa, the borderland between the last sliver of Basque Country and La Rioja proper.
Our group is small. Two Dutch guys, an English couple. The guide is a charming local woman, fond of wine and life in La Rioja.
Inside, the bodega smells of oak, yeast, and time. In one tunnel, new French oak barrels lie in neat rows, cool and perfect. In another, older American oak barrels, their walls black with noble rot.
Outside, the Gehry hotel looms above the green vineyards, a fantastical explosion of metal ribbons. Silver, then gold, then wine-red. Gehry’s masterpiece. This is the man who gave the world the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A. (Let’s not talk about the Meta headquarters, one of his duds.)
The tasting takes place in a cool, soberly decorated room with barrels for tables, old paintings, and bottles lining the walls.
We start with a Verdejo white. Cool. Crisp. No oak. A perfect antidote to the heat.
The reds follow. A younger one, bright with the estate’s world-class Tempranillo. Then the Marqués de Riscal Gran Reserva, glorious, blends Tempranillo, Graciano, and Cabernet Sauvignon.
Back in the 1850s, Marqués de Riscal pioneered French techniques and grapes in La Rioja, so they’re grandfathered in for Cabernet. It grows beautifully here.
After the tour, we climb to the Gehry building for an aperitif and a cappuccino. A trio of girls in sundresses nurse wine and flirt with the bartender, maybe waiting for a celebrity.
Fifteen euros for a croquette sends us back down to the bodega bar, next to the gift shop, for two-euro Verdejo, local pinchos, and air conditioning bliss.
Tomorrow, we aim for the coast, Laredo, and Santander. A glass of wine and a grilled sardine at the Sardinero Hotel would be nice, as would a stroll along Santander’s Victorian promenade, the perfect cure for all the heat inland.
La Rioja has delivered. Someone shows me a photo of the same valley in winter. Snow on the vines. Peaks are capped in white. The jagged rocks softened. White to the sky.
We’ll wait for winter for that.
Stay tuned for the rest of our El Camino de Santiago travelogue, which takes us from Santiago de Compostela into Portugal.