Sights & Attractions in Bilbao and the Basque Country

Northern Spain's Bay of Biscay area, at the western end of the Pyrenees along the border with France, is where the Cantabrian Cordillera and the Pyrenees nearly meet. The green foothills of Basque Country gently fill this space between the otherwise unbroken chain of mountains that rises from the Iberian Peninsula's easternmost point at northern Catalonia's Cap de Creus and ends at western Galicia's Fisterra, or Finisterre (World's End). Navarra—part Basque and part Castilian-speaking Navarrese—lies just southeast and inland of the Basque Country, with the backdrop of the Pyrenees rising up to the north. La Rioja, below Navarra, nestles in the Ebro River valley under the Sierra de la Demanda to the south and stretches east and downriver to Calahorra and the edge of Spain's central meseta (plains).