getting to the start

[E. O. Pederson]

Unless you are fond of trains, a bus is probably the best way (faster, more
frequent, cheaper and more convenient to the airport than the trains) from
Bilbao to Donostia (San Sebastian).  RENFE runs frequent trains from
Donostia to the border at Irun, but only a small number of them cross into
France, mostly because of the change of gauge.  Several options exist, but
the easiest is to take a taxi from the Irun station across the border (now a
wide spot in the road with abandoned customs sheds) to the Saint Jean de Luz
gare and take SNCF from there to Bayonne, frequent trains.  Depending on the
season, there are several trains from Bayonne to St. Jean Pied-de-Port each
day.  This trip is easy to make, but it requires rather a lot of connections
and thus makes for a very long day.

If you want to break your journey, both Donostia and Bayonne are quite
pleasant places, though neither is overloaded with cheap hotels.  Bayonne is
one of the most attractive smaller cities in France, and the local food is
some of the best in the world (not for nothing that for many years the chef
at the best French restaurant in New York was from Bayonne, and the
restaurant was called the Cote Basque!). If you spend the night in Bayonne,
be sure to watch the tidal bore on the river, it is really impressive to see
a river reverse direction of flow.
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