The hotel conference room in Bilbao is a welcome break from the Basque sun. I take my seat alongside my colleague, Krista Taylor sitting opposite, chirpy and glowing from five days of trial-running her new Small Groups tour ‘San Sebastian and Beyond‘—the first time many of the locals have ever met a tour group. For me, it’s my first time in Basque Country, and Krista’s enthusiasm has made the journey a delight. As I pour water into three glasses, I want to know why she chose this region, why now. The smile never leaves her lips as she takes a sip and tells us how she built this tour.
“We really present a full image of what Basque life is like.”
“I created the trip of San Sebastian and Beyond in the Basque Country simply because it’s a part of France and it’s a part of Spain that people fall in love with. The first time that they come, they have these ‘wow moments’, and they want to see more. I created this trip particularly for Small Groups, because we can go to places that large coaches, large groups can’t go to. We have these intimate, very personal moments with the locals that we’ve connected with, and it really showcases a part of Europe that most people don’t get to go in-depth to. We peel back the layers of the Basque country, the culture, the regions, the cities, the small towns and villages, and we really present a full image of what Basque life is like.”
“Guests can expect the unexpected”
“We start in Bordeaux, where you have the vineyards. Then we go down and through the sand dune systems to the place where we have the oysters. We go down to Biarritz, which is a stunning part of France. It’s like castles and surf beaches and amazing, amazing food. We then go down into Saint Jean de Luz, and it’s a little tiny fishing town where the macaron comes from. We try food at the local markets, and then we cross over the Pyrenees. We go up to the top of a mountain for beautiful views of all of the Atlantic coast. We then go down into San Sebastián. We try the pinxtos, the local food with the local drink and the local characters. We also get to go to really incredible places like Guernica to have a very moving Make Travel Matter Experience. In Getaria we walk the Camino del Santiago, and we also get to meet a local fishing family and try some fresh caught fish for our Be My Guest. and of course we finish it all off when we come down into Bilbao, home to the Guggenheim. There’s a little bit of everything.”
“For me, this is my home away from home”
“To create a trip, it feels like it takes no time, but it takes over a year. When we start to develop our trips, we think about the places that we want to go, the places we want to bring to people, doing research to see what people may be interested in. For myself, being on the road in France and Spain, and coming to these places and having connections with the locals…there’s a really strong family connection. For me, this is my home away from home. I take my guests to see people that, for me, I consider to be personal friends. So together all of these characters, all of these people that we meet on our trips, they’ve helped me to create this. It is not one person creating a trip with Small Groups at Trafalgar.”
“Once we research, once we find out where we want to stay, then we have to look at the different components. We work with our content team, our creative team, our social media, our marketing, our web, our brochure, and our contracting team. And so, while I have contacts and my friends and family that want to work with us here in the Basque region, it takes a lot of steps to get there. This trip that we’ve created, though it has been about a year in the making, it’s been years in the planning, and for a lot of us it’s been a dream for a really long time.”
“Authentic, memorable, personal moments that you can’t get anywhere else in the world”
“This trip, in particular, is ideal for small groups. We can take our coach into places that large groups couldn’t go to. We have access to individuals, to families, to places that are closed to the rest of the world. And so, what this does is it brings authentic, memorable, personal moments that you can’t get anywhere else in the world. We are highlighting a culture, a group of people, two countries in one region, and it is really a breathtaking opportunity to discover and fall in love with France again, Spain again, or even maybe for the first time.”
I saw myself how guests were touched by the intimacy of Krista’s hand-picked experiences. An example is when we met the elders of Guernica, who keep the history of the town’s past tragedy in order by archiving, researching and exhibiting records of the past. We were able to walk through the town with them, ask questions, and gain access to intimate spaces such as the Casa de Juntas (the Basque parliamentary building) and the Tree of Gernika. It is here where the Lehendakari, the president of the Basque Country is sworn in every four years. It is under this tree where Basque leaders have been meeting since the 14th Century to create laws and govern their country. But the space is small, subtle, and private; we were the only non-Basque people there. The beauty of traveling in a small, intimate group was our ability to be granted access and connect with these fundamental parts of Basque life.
“It has its own culture. It has its own identity. It has its own history”
“What’s really unique about the Basque region is a simple fact that it has its own culture. It has its own identity. It has its own history. France and Spain, while they are countries, every area is unique. Every area is different. And what’s really interesting about the Basque region is that most people don’t know about it. And when people come here, maybe for the first time, maybe it’s on one of our regular Trafalgar trips, they say, ‘Why don’t we visit this more?'”
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“I love the Basque region. The weather is incredible. You’ve got stunning beaches. The food is phenomenal, and the people are—they’re so humble, and they are so interested and proud of the fact that you come here and you want to know about them. It’s not their custom to be out and to be loud and proud, but they want to have those moments with you to share a coffee with you to talk about your history and tell you about theirs.”
“Because we’re going there, it means that their son can continue the tradition of being on the water.”
“So, if I have to pick three highlight experiences on this tour…well, it’s really hard because there are so many amazing experiences. But my top three would start with going to Saint Jean de Luz in France. It’s a little tiny fishing village, home to the macaron. We’ve got a lot of history here, we’ve got the stunning architecture. You can walk to the beach. You can have a lovely plate of shellfish, and you can visit the local markets.
After that, I think I would have to say, walking the Camino. Walking the the pathway of Saint James. It is a pilgrimage, and that’s kind of what we’re doing on every single trip. It’s a pilgrimage to have these experiences, to have these connections, and so walking part of this pathway of Saint James, it is to experience what people have wanted to experience for hundreds of years, and one of the great things about this pathway is you never know who you’re going to meet. Like when you go on a trip with any with us, you don’t know who you’re going to meet, but it’s those people that you meet that bring to life the places that you see. So seeing pilgrims with their scallop shells on their back and and learning why they’re doing this walk? Maybe they’re doing it for personal reasons. Maybe they’re doing it for others or for loved ones, or you never know. But that’s why you travel. It’s because you want to visit places, but it’s also because you want to understand why other people are traveling as well.”
“And finally, the third-oh my gosh! This experience has me moved every time it happens, and the first time that we did it, it almost brought me to tears because it’s our Be My Guest, in Getaria. It’s this small village in the Basque Country where we go and meet a local fishing family, and there’s not many left. So we walk down to the port, where we see a boat coming in off the distance, with it the fishing family: the father, the uncle, the sons, the cousins-they’re on board the boat. They come back in and they they show you what they’ve caught that day. And literally from there, we walk maybe 50 steps to get to their home-restaurant, which is this old salt warehouse. They clean the fish, they put it on this grill, and the smells…I mean, if we could put a smell into a screen, you would actually fall in love with this place before even seeing a picture of it. But we smell the food, we drink the wine, we talk with the family who, because we go and visit them them, are able to continue with their traditions. This Be My Guest has been created specifically for us. There are no other travel companies that visit, and so because we’re going there, it means that their son can continue the tradition of being on the water without having to leave this small village and go elsewhere for work. So when we get to see this family, it’s such a moving experience because you can tell that they are truly amazed and grateful that we are there. And on the flip side, I think we are even more grateful that we get to be a part of something like that. It’s really special.”
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Walking through Bilbao’s streets afterward, this region sits differently to me than it did five days ago. Through the small towns and villages of the Basque Country, we’ve been welcomed into spaces most travelers never see, meeting the people who keep these places alive: fishing families who still work the same waters their ancestors did, locals who preserve their history with pride. Krista moves through it all with the ease of someone who’s at home, introducing guests not to attractions but to friends. That distinction, between showing off a tourist destination versus bringing people into a community, is the entire trip. And now that I’ve seen the difference, I know this is what travel is supposed to feel like.