Transport in the Basque Country is of high quality and very varied.
We are going to divide transportation in the Basque Country into 5 different categories, all of them different ways to get to the Basque Country from your destinations: Plane, train, car, boat and bus. All of them have a lot of variety in terms of routes and schedules, we from turismovasco.com recommend traveling by car if possible because in this way we would save having to rent a car once we are in the Basque Country. We must take into account that the Basque Country has very beautiful corners in inhospitable places, such as San Juan de Gaztelugatxe, many coastal villages of Gipuzkoa, the Bardenas Reales and many more!!!!
Transportation in the provincial capitals of the Basque Country is very well organized and we don’t have to worry about how to get from one part of the city to another. We could cite Bilbao as the city in the Basque Country with the best public transport, but we should not underestimate San Sebastian, Vitoria or Pamplona.
Airplane: The airport with more passenger air traffic in the Basque Country is undoubtedly the one in Bilbao (Loiu, La paloma), in the airport of Bilbao operate several low cost airlines (low cost) among which we can find vueling, volotea or Easyjet among others. We must not forget the airlines that without being low cost transport many tourists to the Basque Country from Europe and America, a clear example of this are Iberia and Lufthansa. Bilbao airport has several low cost parking lots where we can leave our cars in case we want to travel abroad, we leave you the link to the article we wrote about our opinion of the different parking lots at Bilbao airport.
The airport of San Sebastian, in hondarribia follows closely the one of Bilbao offering flights to the big cities of the peninsula like Madrid or Barcelona, located in a town with a special charm we recommend you to visit the town in which this mythical airport is located.
We must not forget the airport of the French Basque country, a clear example of this is the airport of Biarritz, this airport allows us to have very cheap flights to big cities like London or Dublin. As in the case of the airport of San Sebastian, we believe it is essential to visit Biarritz when traveling to this airport, a magical town, located in the French Basque country, giving us many options for a route throughout the Basque country.
We have many other options to travel to the Basque Country, but in order not to bore you we are only going to tell you 2 of the cheapest options to travel to the Basque Country:
Santander: Santander airport is served by the low cost airline rayanair, which allows us to fly to Santander for really ridiculous prices, once in Santander, we can either rent a car to visit the Basque country, or take a bus to go to Bilbao, in both cases it will only take 50 minutes to reach the Basque country, our destination.
2.-Madrid: One of the airports with more air traffic of the entire peninsula, also has the highest demand in terms of air travel, which is why we can always travel to Madrid and in Madrid take the Alsa bus to Bilbao, in this case it will take about 5 hours to reach the Basque country.
bilbao airport
Train: The train is a transport that offers us many options, the train routes connect daily many points of the Basque Country with cities in Spain and even France (French Basque Country). These services are offered by multiple transport companies but the most used by the Basques are the euskotren wagons, the Basque Country’s own train network. But not for being the most used by the Basques we must omit the rest of lines, on the contrary, we must take them into account if we want to move with more freedom in our trip to the Basque Country. We recommend you to look at the routes offered by the companies RENFE (for routes with Spain) and SNCF (for routes with the French Basque Country).
Euskotren, train Basque Country
We must take into account the new high-speed network that is being developed in the Basque Country, the Basque Y, which will link the three capitals of the Basque Country, and will make it possible to connect the Basque Country with Paris in record time.
Boat: We all know the character of the northern sea, the Cantabrian Sea. We must take into account that in the Basque Country we have about 200 kilometers of coastline with a deep-rooted seafaring tradition. A few years ago, the only cruise ship that visited the Basque Country was the one coming from the United Kingdom. Nowadays, on the other hand, we cannot count on one hand the number of cruise ships that visit the cruise port of Getxo and San Juan de Luz on a monthly basis.
Car: As we have already recognized at the beginning of this article the car seems to us the most appropriate means of transport to visit the Basque country, since in most of the trips we will make some route as Bilbao – San Sebastian – French Basque country for example in which the car is essential to see the most beautiful places of the Basque country in the shortest possible time. If you are going to come by car to the Basque Country you must remember that this is perhaps one of the most expensive transports in the Basque Country due to the price of gasoline and tolls, the toll of Burgos-Vitoria, AP-1, is the most expensive of all the Basque Country, 1.20€ for every 10 kilometers or so, the toll of the A-8 that joins Bilbao and San Sebastian is 35% cheaper, we will always be able to go by secondary roads losing a little more time.
The car is important to visit the Basque Country if we want to reach all those places that have a special charm, a very clear example is San Juan de Gatzelugatxe.
If you decide to travel by car, remember that during the cider house season it is better not to use the car, for that there are companies specialized in transporting customers of the cider houses or sagardotegis, and is that the roads that take us to these temples of gastronomy are not usually as comfortable as we would like, in many cases are mountain roads of a single lane.
If you are motor enthusiasts and you like to drive your car or motorcycle on all kinds of public roads, we recommend you to enjoy the inland and coastal roads of the Basque Country, get lost on the Urdaibai roads, cross the Gorbea natural park or just drive all the Basque coast!!!
Bus: In the Basque Country we have very good public transport and among them we must mention the bus, the bus is perhaps the most used means of transport at the level of Euskadi in both short and long trips. We must remember that the capitals of the Basque provinces are very well connected with the rest of the capitals by bus, this is largely due to ALSA buses.
Bilbobus, transport in the Basque Country
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