Eat at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Try an assortment of bite-size pintxos. Make your own cheese. Attend a cooking workshop to make the best meals at home. Try freshly-caught fish at a grillroom with views of the Cantabrian Sea. In Bizkaia you can have a thousand and one culinary experiences. Here are but a few of them!

Basque cuisine can be enjoyed in many different ways. Bar counters display the most enticing pintxos, bite-size culinary treats to feast your eyes and mouth on. At traditional restaurants you can have Basque culinary staples like bacalao al pil-pil or vizcaína (cod in traditional sauces), txipirones (baby squid), pisto (ratatouille) or bonito (tuna). All these quality ingredients are the result of the known-how of Basque arrantzales (fishermen) and baserritarras (farmers).

But there are ways other than eating to enjoy Basque gastronomy. You can also have out-of-this-world culinary experiences, like a tasting of txakoli from Bizkaia at a local winery (where you can buy a bottle or two as well) or a meal at a cider house featuring txuleta (steak) and tortilla de bacalao (cod omelette) – and, of course, cider poured from the barrel as everyone cries, ‘Txotx!’.

If you have a knack for cooking, you can sign up for a pintxo-making course or a workshop in new cuisine, where you will get the smartest tips and finest recipes from renowned chefs. For a purely Basque experience, you can learn how to make talo (corn tortilla), cheese, honey or jam, or even spend a few hours in the life of a local food producer.

Tender is the night

Bilbao is renowned for its festive nightlife. The city and its surroundings come to life from Thursday to Sunday in the evening. Bilbao La Vieja and the Casco Viejo (Old Town) are the areas with the highest concentration of LGBT+ bars and nightclubs, but you can also find a few of them in the centre of town.

The area known as El Triángulo, at the crossroads of Calle de la Torre and Barrenkale Barrena, is perfect to kick-start your bar-crawling experience. At the bars along calle Santa María, also in the Old Town, you can have drinks and pintxos too. At the far end of Calle Barrenkale, you will find a few LGBT+ bars to have a great time in a relaxed atmosphere.

For entertainment until the wee hours, cross the Ría and head for Bilbao La Vieja, where you can enjoy the quintessential Bilbao in a multicultural setting. Here bars are open late, offering spicy shows, live music, DJ sessions, and tons of joy. Other districts like Barakaldo or Portugalete, which can be accessed by public transport, have interesting things for the LGBT+ community as well.