This week’s travel dream: Wandering through Basque Country

Spain’s Basque Country invites the type of travel I enjoy most, said Kate Siber in The Boston Globe. There are few hotels in this bucolic and historic region, which lies on Spain’s northern coast, alongside the Pyrenees. Yet thanks to a government-sponsored program that encourages people to turn their homes into B&Bs, a patchwork of accommodations known as casa rurales offers outsiders a chance to “sink into the details of daily life.” A friend and I set out from the nearby city of Zaragoza, seeking “the old soul” of Basque Country in its “narrow lanes, tiny towns, and centuries-old palaces and farmhouses.” Some of the latter we even stayed in, never paying more than 60 euros ($86) a night.

Getting lost while searching for these out-of-the-way guesthouses was half the fun, as each wrong turn took us to unexpected and “beautiful corners of the region.” En route to a casa rural in Etxebeltzea, we happened upon the small town of Elizondo, with “stone-and-whitewall buildings arranged in neat lines along a river.” We “drank patxaran, a local anise-flavored liqueur,” and watched men play pilota before returning to the road. Our shelter that night was a “stately four-story stone house” from the 14th century. “The hip-width floorboards groaned” as we approached our bedroom, which lay behind a thick, iron-hinged door that “looked as if it had been crafted by giants.”

When we reached the Basque Country’s “sun-bleached northern coast,” we stayed at Arboliz, a family-run lodge high on a hillside. Simple lawn chairs were placed out front to afford guests a view of the “sailboat-studded” Bay of Biscay. At the one nearby restaurant, the only menu options were “big fish or little fish,” yet our choices were perfectly prepared, and we savored our dinner while watching fishermen return from their day at sea. Our final stop was a town south of the coast, Oñati, where our casa rural was a 400-year-old farmhouse with cows “whose bells jingled as they plodded through the meadows.” We arrived shortly before the sun dipped behind the mountains. As I watched the sky turn hues of navy and violet, it occurred to me that each casa rural, like the towns and villages in which they’re found, offered a “window into the heartbeat of Basque life.”

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