By Max Milano (Travel Writer)
We didn’t do the Camino to find ourselves. We did the Camino de Santiago because the Mediterranean summer tried to kill us. We weren’t looking for God, inner peace, or enlightenment. We did it because in July on the Costa Blanca the air stops moving and the Med becomes a hot lake. Fish soup.
The sea is so hot and still that even the Roman garum vats that dot the rocky coast near Javea begin to look like someone’s about to dump a new batch of anchovies in and let them rot to make more garum for Caesar’s dinner party.
The Med is beautiful and chock full of history, but she turns on you in summer. She doesn’t care if you live or die. The sun shows no mercy. The sky is cloudless, and the heat comes in off the Sahara with a mouth full of sand.
So, we decide to escape north and do the Camino de Santiago. In a car. Not on foot.
Call it cheating. Fine. But we’re too jaded, and too fond of air conditioning to share dorm beds with blistered pilgrims playing Christian folk songs on acoustic guitars.
We’ve heard the stories. The race for beds. The passive-aggressive walkers. The ones who lock rivals in bathrooms just to get a spot in the next hostel. No thanks.
We’re not walking the Camino. We’re driving it. Windows up. AC blasting. Water bottles in the glove box. No blisters. No farting strangers. No kumbaya.
We’re doing the Camino from Bayonne to Santiago. Along the northern coast of Spain of green hills, sharp peaks and fishing villages wrapped in fog. We’re chasing cooler weather. A bit of history and a cold beer at the end of the day.
The road we’ll follow once saved a kingdom. The Moors took most of Iberia, but they never crossed these mountains. Up there, the Christians held out. Asturias. León. Galicia. Little kingdoms with big grudges.
They waited. They plotted. They spoke strange old dialects. Proto-this, proto-that. Latin with a local flavor. It became Castilian. Then it became Spanish. Then it circled the world on the backs of conquistadors.
So, we’re driving the Camino. Following the bones of Saint James and the road from forgotten green valleys to a global empire. All of it hidden behind the cool hills of the north of Spain.
Lourdes, Bayonne & Biarritz: Nuns in Running Shoes & Ramen
We reached Bayonne-Biarritz by way of Barcelona, Toulouse, and Lourdes.
Lourdes is a strange kind of town offering religious fervor under plastic tents in a car park under a cathedral. Candle wax rivers flow past souvenir stands. Tour groups from every corner of the Catholic world sweat under a Gothic cathedral, praying out loud in six languages.
A nun in white races past us, pushing a dying man in a wheelchair like it’s the 100-meter dash. The bells ring out across the misty foothills. Somewhere behind us, someone starts singing Ave Maria. Loudly. Off-key.
Every miracle site follows the same formula. A virgin appears to a child, usually poor, sometimes slow. An opportunistic priest gets involved. A shrine goes up. Then the shops open. Holy water in plastic bottles. Virgin Mary fridge magnets. Lines for the grotto. Tour buses idling at the edge of town. Lourdes, Fatima, Guadalupe, it’s all the same show.
Bayonne: The Beginning of El Camino
Bayonne’s medieval quarter is quiet. Crooked houses lean over narrow cobbled streets. Wooden beams sag with age. Basque flags flutter lazily from the balconies. The Gothic cathedral is empty, and the cloister is still, its stone arches casting long shadows on worn floors. There are no crowds here. No candles. Just stone, time, and silence.
Few restaurants are open. But the ones that are hum with life. Locals spill onto the cobblestones with glasses of wine and stories to tell. We find a ramen joint, of all things. The waitress is losing her battle with a Spanish tourist who doesn’t speak French. She wins us over with cold beer and hot miso soup.
We sit outside. The street glows golden in the fading light. The carved scallop shells of Saint James guide our eyes toward the cathedral, where the Camino truly begins; 455 miles of history and blisters, all the way to Santiago de Compostela.
Biarritz: Surf City à la Française
Biarritz is not a holy site. It is a place for emperors and surfers.
We arrive as the drizzle comes in blowing sideways off the sea. The Atlantic is a different beast than the Med. It moves with intent. The waves slam into the seawall at La Grande Plage, sending salt spray over the heads of stubborn couples walking their matching dogs.
The Hôtel du Palais stands above it all, a leftover from the Second Empire. Built by Napoleon III for his Spanish wife Eugénie. It started as a summer villa and became a Belle Époque showpiece. It wears the French tricolore like a brooch on its neo-Louis XIII-style chest.
Biarritz was once for royalty. Now it’s for surfers and Parisians on sabbatical. A statue of the virgin on the rocks keeps watch over the water. Waves crash at her feet. Below, in the old fishing port, we duck into a hole-in-the-wall creperie where the chardonnay is decent and the savory crêpes are better than they have any right to be.
We walk back to the hotel through the drizzle. Flowers hang heavy with rain along the coastal road. Palm trees drip. The streetlights flicker in the mist. The ocean keeps roaring below.
Tomorrow, we cross into Spain. Saint-Jean-de-Luz awaits. So does the border. So does the beginning of the Spanish portion of El Camino.
Saint-Jean-de-Luz and Irun: Cakes, Conquests, and Crossing Into Spain
Saint-Jean-de-Luz is too pretty for its own good.
A fishing village turned postcard, where the boats bob in perfect harbors and the shutters match the flags. Basque red. Basque green. Basque white. It smells like sea salt, paprika, and something slow-roasting in duck fat. You walk five minutes and pass six bakeries selling the same almond cake. The one baked for the royal wedding. The one still wrapped in gold foil like it’s the year 1660.
The town once helped end centuries of war between France and Spain. A royal marriage did the trick. Louis XIV, the Sun King, married María Teresa of Spain right here. The church still stands, crooked and wooden and strange. The door they sealed shut after the ceremony is still sealed. No one enters through it anymore. The peace, they say, must stay inside.
Basque culture is everywhere. In the flags. In the food. In the dry, spicy sausage. In the signs you can’t pronounce. You’re expected to know some French in France, but here that’s not enough. Here they’d like you to try Basque, too.
We duck into a used bookstore with dusty Tintins in the window. I buy Tintin Goes to the Moon and Asterix the Gladiator. The lady behind the counter suggests a Basque edition. I laugh and explain in French that learning her language had already taken a lot of my time and effort. No extra time left to tackle a language that isn’t Latin-based. “Maybe if we move here,” I offer as a feeble apology.
She nods politely like she’s heard it before.
After lunch, we cross into Spain.
The border is barely there. Just a tollbooth. No guards. No questions. But the landscape shifts. The French side has elegant Basque villas tucked into green hills. On the Spanish side, clusters of apartments rise like bunkers. Blocks of gray stacked like Lego. Each building its own mini-town, with a butcher shop, fruit stand, and tiny café tucked into the ground floor. Ugly, but practical. This is how the Spanish like to live; close together, and above their groceries.
In Irun, people crowd the streets in red berets and white t-shirts with red scarves. Some Basque holiday or other. They’re celebrating something. A victory. A rebellion. A saint. It doesn’t matter. In Spain there’s always a reason for a fiesta. Even in the Basque country.
We don’t linger.
If we push on, we’ll make it to San Sebastián by sunset. Just in time for the evening stroll and a table by the sea.
San Sebastián and Bilbao: Protest, Pintxos, and a Bit of Troubled History
We’re sitting at an outdoor café in San Sebastián, sipping cocktails in the warm light of early evening. Just a few steps from the beach. La Concha.
It’s paseo time. The couples are out, arm in arm. Old men in linen jackets. Grandmothers in pearls and careful makeup. This is the daily ritual, but in San Sebastián, it’s also protest hour.
A crowd approaches, loud but orderly. Placards raised high. They want ETA prisoners moved closer to home. Some have been inside a long time, they say. The group marches past us, then slips into the narrow alleys of the old town.
Over them, the statue of Saint Sebastian watches from atop a church. He’s riddled with Roman arrows. His eyes turned skyward. He stays above the fray. A gay saint some claim.
The protesters disappear into an alley we’ve passed before. We called it ETA Alley. Half the bars in there hang ETA flags, yellowed posters, slogans from a not-too-distant troubled time. The other half of the alley features Irish pubs waving pro-IRA banners. One pub boasts a sign: “Since 1983.” That was back when the bombs were going off in Belfast and here too, in the Basque country. Birds of a feather.
Dinner is cocktails and charcuterie boards and pintxos, of course. But you don’t have your dinner all in one place. You walk. You point. You eat. Cold white wine in tiny glasses. Slices of baguette bread topped with jamón, anchovies, local cheeses, and skewers stacked with peppers and meats. At some places, the bar opens onto the sidewalk. Locals lean in through the window to order without stepping inside.
As the night thins out, we walk back to the beach. La Concha is still. The lights of the promenade reflect on the dark water.
Hemingway had his narrator swim here in The Sun Also Rises. We think about jumping in. A midnight dip. But cooler heads prevail.
We go to sleep late, wake early, and hit the road.
Bilbao at Dawn
We arrive in Bilbao as the sun lifts over the hills. I set up the tripod on the far side of the river to shoot the Guggenheim. The light is perfect. Mist clings to the water. The titanium skin of the building catches the first rays and starts to glow. It looks like it’s waking up.
This was once an industrial river. Dirty, forgotten, lined with docks and cranes. Now it reflects art and money. Progress, or something like it.
I notice something scratched into a light post near my feet. Small, almost hidden.
This is not Spain, it says.
And maybe it’s not.
The Basques have their own ways, their own stories. You don’t need a border to feel the difference. Just a quiet morning. A protest. A bit of graffiti left behind in the dawn.
Santander and the Cantabrian Coast: Tortillas, Surfers, and the Celtic Edge of Spain
Bilbao fades behind us. Big, dark, industrial. But there’s a beauty to it. It has a market by the river that glows under soft light. Inside, vendors sell fresh anchovies, blood sausage, Basque cheese. Behind it, narrow alleyways are packed with bars. The kind of bars that make tortilla de patatas to order. Not reheated. Not from a tray but in your own little hot skillet. Golden. Creamy inside. Like an abuela just made it for you.
We press on, hugging the coast.
Laredo catches our eye. The name calls up visions of cowboys, deserts, border towns. Laredo, Texas. Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. But this Laredo is all sand dunes, beach towers, and surfers. Rock formations rise from the sea like broken teeth. A small surfing scene thrives here. No hype. No TikTok influencers. Just waves and people trying to ride them. It feels like a secret.
The road beyond Laredo curls along the coastline like a ribbon tossed from the hills. Green everywhere. Hills that roll down to the ocean, and where rivers pour out of the mist and into the sea. At each river’s mouth, a beach and a tiny village of white houses, crooked roofs, and fishing boats bobbing in the tide.
The mountains rise taller as we head west. The Picos de Europa come into view. Jagged walls of gray and green. These are the same peaks that once kept the Moors out and the Christians in. A natural fortress where Castile, León, Asturias, and Galicia survived, plotted, and eventually took Iberia back.
The sea here is not gentle. It crashes. It howls. The mist from the mountains keeps the land green. The cliffs are high. The roads curve tight. It looks like Ireland. It feels and smells like Northern California. But it’s Spain. Regardless of what the graffiti in Bilbao says.
Santander: Belle Époque Splendor
Santander begins rough. A working port. Fishing trawlers. Docks. Warehouses. But follow the shoreline and it changes. The city softens. By the end of the bay, you find Belle Époque grandeur. A royal palace on a bluff. A seaside promenade lined with striped bathing huts. The Hotel Sardinero, in all its faded glory. A Victorian era casino, too. Because of course.
We sit on the patio of the Sardinero and order their version of menú del día. It’s a five-star lunch. Cava in chilled glasses. Grilled fish. Impossibly fresh bread. On the promenade, beautiful people stroll by. Some look like they just stepped off a yacht or a private plane. Older women cradle tiny dogs like designer bags. Everyone wears sunglasses, though the sky is overcast.
A rocky islet just offshore holds a statue of Neptune. He faces the city like he’s watching over his watery kingdom.
We press on. We’ve heard rumors of blowholes along the coast. Natural geysers that shoot sea spray high into the sky. The locals call them bufones.
Bufones: A Wild Coast of Blowholes
We turn off the highway, following a dirt road toward Bufones de Pría. The landscape changes again. Fewer houses now. Just sheep, peaks, and wind. The Picos de Europa loom like ancient gods. Below them, jagged cliffs dive straight into the surf.
We park beside a wooden shack. It sells cold drinks and cider. From here, we walk.
The bufones hiss and roar like trapped whales. Water explodes from the rocks with the power of a geyser, then falls in mist over the cliffs. The land seems solid, but under your feet it groans. The sea is trying to get in.
Back at the shack, they pour us Asturian cider. But not like you’d expect. You don’t just uncork and drink. Here, they cut the cork in a peculiar way and ask you to lift the bottle high above your head and let the cider fall in a thin stream into the glass below. It’s not for show. The impact gives it its fizz, wakes it up.
The woman behind the bar chats with us. I ask her about Gijón. She recommends Cimavilla, the old town by the port. Her eyes light up as she speaks of Asturias. “I could recognize an Asturian anywhere in the world just from his accent,” she says with pride, handing us coffee.
The language here isn’t Basque anymore. It’s Asturian. It sounds like Portuguese, or maybe Galician, but you’d be wise not to say that out loud.
The cider, the cliffs, the green hills, the crashing waves, it all feels strangely Celtic. Something ancient lives here. A northern spirit. A place where things linger. Language. Weather. Silence.
To say it doesn’t feel like Spain would be fair.
But it is Spain. Just not the one with sun umbrellas and flamenco and paella for two.
This is cider and fog. Stone and sea.
We drive on. Gijón calls.
Gijón and Oviedo: Cider, Statues, and the Soul of the North
I’d never heard of Oviedo until Javier Bardem brought it up in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. His character said there was a statue there, a very beautiful, very inspirational statue. Woody Allen must have been laughing. The most famous statue in Oviedo is of Woody Allen himself. Life-size. Standing awkwardly. Round glasses and all. A monument to nebbishness.
The feminist crowd has smashed those glasses more than once. But the city keeps replacing them. Art above the man, they say. Or maybe tourism above scandal. Either way, Woody still stands, squinting into the drizzle like a lost Manhattanite who took the wrong flight and ended up in Asturias.
Oviedo and Gijón are twin cities, a short hop on the motorway apart. Different, but bound together. You go from the sea to the hills in under 30 minutes.
Oviedo: City of Kings
Oviedo sits inland, nestled in the green folds of the foothills of the Picos de Europa. Red brick apartment blocks stack up the slopes in the rain. The further south you go, the steeper the hills get. In winter, the mountains drop snow on the rooftops. The air gets thin and sharp. You can feel the Middle Ages in your lungs.
This was the stronghold of King Alfonso II, known as “the Chaste.” He ruled from Oviedo in the 9th century, back when the rest of Spain was Muslim, rich, and far more advanced. But Alfonso had mountains and monks and a mission. He preserved what he could of the old Christian kingdoms and sent the first recorded pilgrim to Santiago. From here, the Camino de Santiago tradition officially begins. He saved the Spanish language, or at least the first scraps of what would become it. Latin with a northern lisp and a prayer behind it.
Gijón: Cider & Seafood
We arrive in Gijón at night, just as the city starts to come alive. Spain is a place where dinner at 10:30 pm is normal. Eleven is fine. A large group might show up for dinner close to midnight without a reservation and expect a table.
We’re in Cimavilla, the old town by the port. The streets are crooked, the stones worn smooth. We grab a table outside a cider and seafood joint. The waiters use a wheeled contraption to pour cider from above their heads without splashing themselves or the customers. Cider isn’t just a drink here. It’s a performance.
The fish is perfect. The sausages are served in a heavy and rich sauce. The cider cuts through the fat and resets your appetite for the next plate. It keeps coming. Gijón isn’t polished. It’s dark, crusty, honest. And it has a kind of joy that feels older than the country it belongs to.
We wander the town after midnight. Arches and alleys. Couples still eating. Kids still awake. Waiters still crossing the street to deliver drinks to people sitting on low stone walls. It’s almost 2 am. No one’s in a rush.
But the Camino calls.
Tomorrow, we cross into Galicia. Through its northern gate.
Praia das Catedrais, Lugo & A Coruña: Stone Churches, Roman Walls, and the Edge of the Atlantic
Praia das Catedrais appears without warning. Horizontal rain slashes across the sand. We descend a steep staircase bolted to the cliffs. The tide is low now, but the sea is moving in with lustful intent. In an hour, this entire beach will vanish beneath the waves.
Arches of raw rock rise from the sand like the ribs of drowned cathedrals. Wind and water have carved vaults and naves into the cliffside. It doesn’t look real. It looks like nature mimicking architecture. Black stone arches defying the raging sea.
I snap photos as the tide begins to lick my heels. The ocean’s coming fast. Time to go, unless we want to swim.
We’ve entered Galicia, and we feel the Celtic vibe immediately. It’s in the green grass, in the cliffs above the sea, in the shape of the letters on water bottles and beach signs.
Lugo: Roman Walls & Caldo Gallego
We head inland, toward Lugo, through mossy hills and low-hanging fog. The sea disappears behind the trees, but we still feel its pull. The road climbs into mountain passes. Spanish shares space with Galego. “Praia” replaces “Playa.” A softer, older tongue. Portugal’s cousin, but with a defiant accent all its own.
Fog thickens in the higher mountain passes as we approach Lugo. The town rises behind its famous Roman walls. They’ve stood for two thousand years, circling the town like a stone halo. We walk the top like the Roman wall’s legionnaires. Down below, the town moves slowly. Rain taps against shuttered windows. People sip coffee under doorways. The walls protect not just the past, but the present too.
Inside, we find a nameless restaurant with a chalkboard menu. We order caldo Gallego; kale, beans, chorizo, served hot in deep bowls.
We don’t stay long. We’re still chasing the sea.
A Coruña: Roman Lighthouse & Land’s End
A Coruña is the end of something.
Not the Camino, but the world as they once knew it. The Romans called this coast Finis Terrae, the end of the Earth. Before maps, before satellites, before Columbus, this was where the world stopped. A place to stand at the edge and stare into the unknown.
The Atlantic slams into black rock. The sky presses low. We stand outside the Tower of Hercules, the oldest working lighthouse on Earth. Built by the Romans. Still standing. Still flashing into the western void.
The city curls around the bay like a crescent of stone and glass. We find galleries by the port, tapas bars, and pulperias hidden behind metal shutters, and seafood that rewrites your memory of food. Razor clams. Grilled octopus. Ice-cold Albariño in fogged-up glasses.
We stumble into a hole-in-the-wall that serves Galician seafood tucked inside Venezuelan arepas. A Coruña looks outward, across the Atlantic and into its former colonies. Galicia has always felt forgotten by the rest of Spain. Maybe that’s why so many Galicians left. There are so many in Argentina that “Gallego” is still the generic word for Spaniard. They keep their accents for life, no matter how long they live among others. They’re always halfway to Portuguese, and some say all the way.
The weather here changes by the minute. Sun, fog, rain, then sun again. The locals shrug. This is Galicia. You don’t fight the weather here. You live inside it.
A Coruña isn’t on the Camino proper. Pilgrims rarely make the detour. But it feels final. Like we’ve reached Spain’s outer edge. We stand on the cliffs. Somewhere out there, beyond the white-capped horizon, is America.
But for now, this is far enough.
Tomorrow, we turn south. Santiago de Compostela awaits. The end of our own journey across the wild, green top of Spain.
Santiago de Compostela: The End of the Camino
We arrive in Santiago de Compostela not knowing what to expect.
I imagine pilgrims arriving to the end of El Camino like the end of a marathon. I expected to see sweaty, limping pilgrims collapsing to the ground, kissing the stones, bursting into tears.
What we find instead is a genteel town. Quiet. Impossibly beautiful. A crown of stone dominated by a baroque cathedral that looks like it was airlifted from Mexico City and dropped in the green hills of Galicia.
We head straight to the old Hospital of the Catholic Kings, now a Parador with a posh terrace facing the main plaza. Waiters in pressed uniforms serve cava and gourmet Galician empanadas as we watch pilgrims trickle into the square under the droning wail of a lone bagpipe.
Most of the terrace is taken up by Americans and expats. It feels like a Woody Allen film if you stop and listen. Older couples talk about stocks, onward travel plans, and wine pairings. Their kids, fresh-faced and monogrammed, share elaborate desserts with new Spanish friends. They say they walked the Camino. Maybe they did. But everyone looks fresh as daisies in preppy clothes and Ray-Bans.
The whole scene is a little anticlimactic.
We watch pilgrims arrive on the square as we sip cava from our terraced view point. They stop. Some make the sign of the cross. One bows. Another takes a selfie. That’s it. No applause. No banner at the finish line. No priest with holy water. Just the spires above and the cobblestones below.
At golden hour, we wander the narrow streets. The sun gleams down the alleys at a low, slanted angle. I snap photos of medieval arches, cloisters, wandering tourists, priests hugging in the street.
We walk to a park just outside the walls. It overlooks the town. Tiled roofs. Church towers. Soft green hills all around. It could be 500 years ago. Not much has changed.
The coastline is behind us now. Gone are the cliffs, the crashing waves, the fog. The land here is soft. Bucolic. Restful.
To the south, we feel the pull of Portugal. Porto is just a couple of hours away by car. Maybe we’ll drive on, chase some port wine and codfish before summer ends. A few days ago, we were in France. Now we’re brushing the edge of another border.
This was our Camino de Santiago Road trip. Maybe someday we’ll do it on foot. Four hundred and fifty-five miles across the top of Spain.
Do it in the summer. You’ll be glad you did.
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Max Milano is a travel writer and photographer based in Los Angeles, California, and Valencia, Spain. His latest photography book, Mexico City Noir, Life Under The Volcanoes, is Available on Amazon. His photographs are available at MaxMilanoPix.
