In Autumn 2024 we were dangerously low on Italian hard cheeses and olive oil of any origin. Fortunately, I had a couple weeks of vacation left for the year to consume, so we spent them collecting cheese and oil and other groceries. It was a mixture of places we’d discovered last year or earlier and several brand-new (to us) places.
If you just want the photodump, it’s at https://cheese-run-2024.cliff.omg.lol/.
Map
Dijon
This was just a pit-stop along our drenched trek across France, not terribly far over the border from Germany. But we happened upon their Marché de Noël, and we are pretty sure we were the only tourists there. Quite a different experience compared to Nürnberg or even Colmar.
Bordeaux
Last summer we had such a nice time driving the little roads between Bordeaux and Épernay (avoiding the traffic jams on the toll roads – longer but cheaper and much more scenic) that we decided to try our luck with that again. Our GPS took us down hours of little-more-than-one-lane forest and straight-the-through-the-village roads. It was certainly less boring than toll road driving, but the rain sorted counteracted any scenic relaxation benefit we might have otherwise had.
Originally this too was supposed to be just a pitstop, but it was more targeted wine-focused in two ways:
- We wanted to get some more Chateau d’Eck after our first visit to Bordeaux in summer 2023. There is a long story there about the Mairie and ordering a salad that came with more duck meat (including gizzards) than vegetables, and how good the wine was with that salad.
- We wanted to hit Aux 4 Coins du Vin again, which we did, after catching a train from the Chateau into Bordeaux and using the tram to get around in the city. In case you missed it last time, Aux 4 Coins du Vin is a hip wine bar whose concept is that you serve yourself small, medium, or large glasses of wines from the region or around the world out of a dispenser automat. And their wine snacks were excellent.
So we did both of those things.
Asturias
OK, here’s where we started to get into the (to us) undiscovered country. The weather didn’t get much better as we crossed into Spain and made our way west through Basque Country out towards Asturias. We followed a river quite some time for the last stretch towards our hotel in Arenas de Cabrales.
A word of warning: they are not kidding with those signs about the falling rocks! On our last morning, as we were headed east out towards our next home for 5 nights, oncoming cars kept flicking their brights at us. We rounded a bend and saw why: two beach ball-sized boulders were blocking part of both lanes of traffic and would have put an abrupt end to our road trip if we hadn’t seen them.
El Páis de los Quesos
In Arenas de Cabrales, our home base in Asturias, there is a cheese cave museum tour you can take. It’s not expensive and a good way to spend 45 minutes on a rainy day. If you’re not a Spanish speaker, you can get non-Spanish hand-outs describing the cheese-making tools on display in the cave. After the tour, you watch a short a multi-lingual video about the cheeses of the region and get a sampler of the cheese you just saw maturing on the shelves in the cave, to be washed down with a cup of local cider. The cheese was great; the cider less so – though I did enjoy other ciders from the region.
It’s not far from the coast, but it took longer than we thought to drive there.
Picos de Europa
Asturias is up in the clouds of the Picos de Europa mountain range. We oohed and ahhed at the dynamic landscapes at different times of day.
Euskal Herria
Santander
We stopped off here for lunch (it turned out to be pintxos, surprise!) on the day we pulled up stakes from Arenas de Cabrales. Of note were the city library (I hope it’s as gorgeous on the inside as it is on the outside), and the best rice pudding I’ve had in my life, discovered at a hole-in-the-wall bakery we discovered seeking the aforementioned lunch.
Garai
We stayed at a stylish hotel high up in the hills outside of Durango called Garaiko Landetxea. I think the building used to be the rectory for the church directly next door. Clearly they have put a lot of work into the place, and our room was great. The breakfasts were inspiring; the views at sunrise and sunset from the tiny balcony overlooking the hillside even moreso. It was a good base from which to visit cities and landscapes and museums in the area.
San Sebastian
We met up with an internet friend and got a personalized tour of the best places for pintxos and postres and high-end supermarket fare! It’s a good thing we spent most of the time indoors; the weather was terrible that day.
Ekainberri
For something like €7,50 we got a tour of the replica of the cave art archaeological site – kind of a 16,000-year-old art gallery and real estate tour wrapped up in one visit. The tour is only offered in Spanish and Basque, but other languages get an audio guide (which was more than adequate). We ended up having about 3 hours to kill in Zestoa because we didn’t buy our tour in advance. We arrived in Zestoa (the small town about a 20-minute walk from the museum site) just barely too late for the second-to-last tour of the day and had to wait for the last one to start. At least the weather was starting to brighten up.
Buy in advance (https://www.ekainberri.eus/) and then plan your day around that. Don’t look for much else to do in Zestoa, apart from pintxhos and a glass of sidra.
Deba hills and coast
Parkin was convenient near the top of that hill.
Bilbao
We visited the Guggenheim. It was cool.
Oh, this looks familiar.
Arles
This was an overnight stop on our way back from Spain. We stayed at Mas des 2 Platanes. It was fine – a little pricier than we wanted, but the pickings slim. The restaurant recommendations from our host were all well out of our price range, so we scoped out a North African restaurant in city center (Goúts Orientaux: Cuisine Marocaine](https://restaurantguru.com/Restaurant-Gouts-Orientaux-Arles)), which thrilled us with its vegetarian and lamb and prune tagine dishes. Go there and don’t be bashful if your French skills are as bad as ours; the host/waiter/cook is very patient and helpful.
Bergamo
Just a place to sleep and shop between big drives from Arles to Bergamo and Bergamo to Regensburg.
