Northern Spain/Rioja Wine Region June & October 2009
Dates: May 23-30th, June 6-13th 2009, August 8-15th, October 10th-27th
Duration: 8 days, 7 nights
Includes: accommodations, mechanical service, guided rides, transportation within tour dates and many other amenities.
Hotels: 4**** and 3***
Massage: available for a small fee
Meals: All breakfasts, 2 lunches and 5 dinners
Rides: Guided by pro and ex-pro cyclists
Mileage: 40-100kms a day including some category climbs
Airport Pickup: Bilbao, Spain
Airport Drop off: Bilbao, Spain
Price: 2,725 € in double-occupancy
Single-occupancy: 400€
Deposit: 500 € due at time of reservation
Please contact us for availability. This trip is available as a custom/private group tour. Minimum group size is 8 and maximum group size is 16. Contact us for availability.

Itinerary for our June & October 2008 Trips
Day 1: Hondarribia
Pick-up: Bilbao Airport
Guests will be greeted at the Bilbao airport by Gruppetto Tours’ staff. Guests will depart airport for our hotel on the coast. We will have a reception at the hotel upon arrival, and then go for a walk around the coastal town of Hondarribia. Before dinner the mechanic will be available to make any needed adjustment to your bike.

Saturday evening is the most popular day of the week for locals to go out. Expect the streets, bars and restaurants to be bustling into the early hours of the morning. The Basques, much like the Spanish, love to eat late so most restaurants don’t open for dinner until 9:00.

We will have dinner at a local Jatextea in Hondarribia that specializes in the local gastronomy.

Day 2: Hondarribia
After breakfast at the hotel we will depart for our ride. Our 70km ride today will take us from Txingudi bay inland, along the Bidasoa River and into France. We will ride on the edge of the Peñas de Aya Natural Park that embraces deep gorges, waterfalls, rock walls, monoliths and corridors, whose unique shapes and colours make up the single most important granite mass in the Basque Country. We will then head northeast passing through Bera, with its picturesque houses, as well as the small French Village of Sare, famous for its grand caves, before we reach the coast again.

We will enter into Saint Jean de Luz, a beautiful seaside resort and active fishing port not far from the Spanish border. The town center of St Jean de Luz has a medieval background, influenced in the past from Spain and the Moors, with a mixture of architectural styles and Old World charm evident in the port and narrow lanes. We will follow the coastline back passing through Hendaye and Irun before arriving back in Hondarribia.

Lunch will be on your own in town. We will have a few hours in the afternoon after lunch to do a bit of sight-seeing in Hondarribia.

In the early evening we will drive to the coastal beach town of San Sebastian—a city of eye-catching beauty Donostia-San Sebastian aims to rid itself of nostalgia for a past when it was royalty’s chosen summer home and the ‘in’ place with high society, preferring to remain, thanks to its pedestrian precincts and outstanding cultural projects, ‘simply human’.

You will notice that the locals love to stroll, whether it be a walk along La Concha Bay, or walking around the pedestrianalized Casco Viejo, the old part of town, sampling txikiteos and pintxos (little drinks and hors d’oeuvre). Casco Viejo is the temple of pintxos, both for the locals and for the tourists that walk through its streets and let themselves be seduced by the dozens of varieties of pintxos the bars offer.

The afternoon walk through the narrow streets and popping into bar after bar is a must. It must be done in a relaxed manner, with no pre-established itineraries, simply letting oneself be carried away by the murmuring of voices or by the aroma coming from a tavern; but one has to be careful, the txakoli or the cider which must accompany each pintxo may just go to your head. Among the many possible places, it is worth stopping at the Martínez, with its seafood pintxos; the Txepetxa, the realm of anchovies; the Tamboril with its mushrooms; the Borda-Berri for its hot foie gras on toast; and La Cepa, one of the best bars in the old part.

We will have a 5-course dinner in Casco Viejo overlooking the port.

Day 3: Vitoria-Gasteiz
After breakfast at the hotel we will depart for our 40km ride out to Hondarribia’s lighthouse and then back through town heading west through Renteria, and Lezo. This will bring us to the foot of Cat. 1 Jaizkibel, the famed climb of the Classic of San Sebastian World Cup which always separates the contenders from the pack. The Jaizkibel juts out distinctly from its coastal environs. Its steepest sections are in the earliest kilometres, however the second section maintains around a 5% grade. There is certain to be graphitized names on the road up to the summit. We will descend back to Hondarribia and to our hotel.

There will be time to have lunch in Hondarribia before venturing inland to our second destination—the Basque Provence of Alava, and its capital Victoria-Gasteiz. Vitoria-Gasteiz has more open space per capita than anywhere else in Spain and is one of the best cities in Europe as far as natural areas are concerned.

Just on the edge of the Medieval Quarter and Ensanche district is our hotel, which is also situated near Park La Florida. La Florida is the starting point for the three kilometres of walkway through the woods connecting the city center to the Armentia Meadows.

The city’s pleasures await you. Spend the afternoon strolling through the park, have a glass of regional wine and/or a pintxo in the Plaza de España or do a bit a window shopping along in the Ensanche shopping district. The streets of Ensanche invite you to walk peacefully, and there is nothing better than stopping at the bars, such as El Rincón de Luis Mari in the calle Rioja with its excellent bar; the banderillas at Saburdi (Dato, 32); the variety of cold and hot pintxos at Casa Felipe (Fueros, 28); traineras, salmon rolls and pintxos of mushroom with ham and Dublin Bay prawns at El Dólar (Florida, 26) and gildas, omelettes or slices of bonito with mayonnaise and piquant red peppers at El Mesón (Ortiz de Zárate, 5).

The cobbled streets of Vitoria's Medieval Quarter are not only the nightlife scenery for the young. During the day, at around midday, many of its bars offer dozens of miniature specialities on the counters, which are ideal to accompany the Rioja wine, which is a must here to enjoy what Alava has to offer. Vitoria's pintxos are prepared with products from the land, meats and vegetables. In particular, they use cold cured meats, cheese and peppers, which are the real kings of Vitoria's bars. Amongst the bars that best look after this gastronomic offer we must mention, Trafalgar, Bazter or Ondarribi.

We will have dinner together at Joseba Beloki’s favorite pizzeria.

Day 4: Vitoria-Gasteiz
After breakfast at the hotel we will leave for our 95km ride. Today’s ride will be quite hilly, taking us over the de Zalidiaran as well as the Kantauri Mountain range and into the region of Rioja. You will get a stunning panoramic of the wine region before descending into the small village of San Vicente de la Sonsierra.

Many wineries in Rioja Alavesa (an area covering nearly all of the left bank of the Ebro river, between the Conchas de Haro and Lanciego) provide guided tours and lunches for groups, so we will have a typical late Spanish lunch at one of the area’s wineries after a short tour.

Alava's wines are amongst the most acclaimed wines in Spain, in particular for its table reds, either young or vintage wines, and even internationally. The main varieties of grape grown in Alava are "tempranillo" and "viura", the former being a native variety, which takes up to 70% of the vineyards in this region. A typical menu at a winery includes potato and chorizo stew, and barbecued lamb chops.

After lunch we will ride back to Vitoria-Gasteiz.
Dinner on your own in town.

Day 5: Vitoria-Gasteiz
After breakfast at the hotel we will depart for our ride. Our 95km ride will take us over the Puerto de Opakua and Puerto de Azazeta, two climbs that are always part of the professional Tour of the Basque Country race route in April. These roads are frequented by local professional and amateur cyclists, of which there are many here in Vitoria-Gasteiz and its environs.

In the afternoon you might want to visit on of the many museums in town. This city abounds with cultural and civic centers. Perhaps the most unusual of them all is the Museo Fournier de Naipes, which houses over 20,000 playing cards from every place and time period. Also worth seeing is the Museum of Archeology, Museum of Armoury, Museum of Bellas Artes, and Museum of Natural Science.

After dinner at the hotel you might want to check out some of the local nightlife along the streets of Pintoreria and Chuchilleria.

Day 6: Bilbao
This is our last ride together in the Basque Country. Today we will have an easy 50km ride through one of the most attractive parts of Alava, the area encompassing the Ullibarri and Urrunaga reservoirs. They were created to provide water for Vitoria-Gasteiz and Bilbao, these artificial lakes, now the biggest wetlands in the Basque Country, have become real leisure centers.
We will have lunch in Vitoria before leaving for our third and final destination—Bilbao, the capital of Bizkaia, a province that suits its label ¨land of contrasts¨. It hardly seems possible that in one single province, and simply by changing valleys, we can go from industrial area to nature reserves; from proud stately boroughs to towns marked by rapid development. Bilbao, with its busy streets, lively shopping areas and gardens, it is a capital that quite obviously offers the visitor far more than the famous Guggenheim Museum.
We will have a personally guided tour of the city in the early afternoon. Our tour will leave us at the Guggenheim Museum which you will have time to visit.
Bilbao has been home to world class restaurants for ages. It went without saying that if a dish was prepared ¨a la bilbaina¨ it would be delectable. The list of restaurants has grown rapidly in recent years due to the fact that so many young Bizkaian chefs—as qualified as their Gipuzkoan counterparts—are beginning to set up shop in the city.

We will be tantalized by one of Bilbao’s restaurants this evening for dinner.

Day 7: Bilbao
We will visit the coast of Bizkaia this morning to see the spectacular Gaztelugatxe church perched upon a rock, surrounded by the sea but connected to dry land by a bridge. You can get to the top by the steps carved out of the rock leading to the small church which houses the image of Saint John the Baptist. When you get to the top, make a wish and ring the bell three times.
We will have lunch overlooking the church at a Basque farmhouse that has been transformed into a restaurant.

Pintxos are real miniature culinary masterpieces, and every area within the Basque Country prepares these gastronomic jewels slightly differently. Bilbao is one of the best places to witness the culture behind eating pintxos and the accompanying "poteo" or bar hopping, which consists of drinking wine, cider or zuritos (small glasses of beer) while standing in the company of friends and moving from one establishment to the next.

Tonight is our night on the town and our night to partake in this culture. Casco Viejo is one of the best places in Bilbao if you are seeking nightlife. All around Bilbao's Old Town there are bars which offer a wide variety of pintxos, most of them are located in places like Plaza Nueva, Perro Street, Somera, etc. It is the most traditional area in Bilbao, and all sorts of people come here, from those who come to do their shopping in the numerous shops, to the traditional "txikiteros" or pub crawlers, who undisturbed, continue to do the rounds at the bars. The most traditional pintxos are calamari (rabas), mussels in hot tomato sauce (tigres), mushrooms, cod, peppers and omelettes. Amongst the bars who best do these gastronomic delicacies we have Víctor Montes (Plaza Nueva), with a detailed decoration of the beginning of the century and one of the best cellars in Bilbao; Ariatza (Somera); Gatz (Santa María); El Xukela and Río-Oja (both in Calle Perro) and Los Fueros (Calle Fueros), famous for their grilled prawns.

Day 8: Bilbao
Drop-off: Bilbao Airport
We will have breakfast at the hotel and one last group get-together over café con leche. Guests will be shuttled to the airport in Bilbao.

Photos by: TDWsport.com