San Sebastián takes pintxos the way other cities take fine dining. The bars are serious, the ingredients are sourced carefully, and the locals eat standing up because the food is good enough to stop for without needing a chair.

This three-hour tour moves from Gros, the surf neighborhood that the city's younger generation has made its own, across the river and into the Parte Vieja, where the pintxos bars have been running for decades. You start in Plaza Cataluña, a square that shows what the city looks like when the tourists are not around, and move to Casa Senra for grilled mushrooms layered with foie gras and alioli, served with a zurito. At Piripi, a natural wine shop in the heart of Gros, you build your own Gilda and taste Gazta Zaharra, the aged sheep's cheese that the city's shepherds have made from leftover Idiazabal for generations.

Plaza Okendo covers the Belle Époque story before Meson Martin, La Cepa since 1948 for grilled squid with Txakoli, and Sidreria Beharri for txuleta with cider poured straight from the barrel. Otaegui closes the tour: open since 1886, it invented the pantxineta and still makes it the same way, taken to go and eaten on the boulevard outside.

Come and eat your way through one of Europe's great foodie cities!