Vitoria-Gasteiz

Several years ago, our friend Cyrus was in the town of Vitoria-Gasteiz, in the Basque area of Spain. (Cyrus is a massage therapist, now with the St Louis Cardinals, and he was in Spain with the US Wrestling Team). Cyrus loved the town and told us we would love it too: According to Wikipedia, "it is the first Spanish municipality to be awarded the title of European Green Capital (in 2012) and it has been also recognized by the UN with the Global Green City Award (in 2019)."  On Cyrus's recommendation, we decided to give it a go.  We spent two days there and we loved it. 

It looks kinda empty here, but in fact the trams are heavily used, as are the bike paths. 

The first day, we walked a few miles from our hotel to the Samburua Wetlands, on the edge of the city.

The wetlands have lots of birds, and other animals including deer.

Juliet got this great picture of some storks. 

There are interesting murals on some of the walls in the city:

Our second (final) day, we rented bikes from the hotel and went for a ride around part of the perimeter of the city. There's are a few routes that go all the way around, but we just went partway and made several detours.

To get to the edge of the city, we followed one of the nice bike paths.

We biked through an arboretum...

...and through agricultural land.

We stopped for lunch at a cafe where a bike path crosses a country road. That's the bike path in the foreground.

All in all it was a great place to spend a couple of days. It would have been nice to have some more time. They have a museum of playing cards! Within the city there are several other interesting attractions too. Getting out into nature was our top priority but if we go back someday we might spend at least a bit of time in the city itself. We did at least walk around the old medieval center.

We are glad Cyrus recommended the city to us. Now we will recommend it too!