Antonio, the host, was the most friendly and helpful host you could wish for. Our car broke down on the way to Arzentales and he went out of his way to help us, using his own car to ferry all of us and our luggage to the villa. He then sorted out a car mechanic for us and ensured our holiday got back on track as soon as possible. He even met us at the train station the following day to help collect our car from the mechanic, in Bilbao.
Antonio speaks no English (and we speak no Spanish!) but we managed to get by with Google Translate, patience and a lot of hand gestures!
Arzentales is a small remote village, surrounded by beautiful rural mountain and forest views. The villa is modern, spacious and accessed via a dirt track shared only with one other house. If you want to stay in a very quiet, secluded area with some of the most beautiful views of the Basque Country visible from the villa then this is the place! It was the perfect place to relax and unwind with no other tourists (or almost anyone!) in sight!
Despite being remote, it has a bus and a train station very nearby (within a 5 minute walk) that facilitates travel to other local villages and towns as well as the bustling City of Bilbao (well worth a day trip to). We obtained all of our grocery needs from a very large supermarket ('Eroski') in the town of Zalla. approximately 5 miles away (so our car was needed, although we did once go by bus whilst our car was being fixed). The villa has 2 fridges and freezers which proved really useful for our size of family, as we could do a large shop at the supermarket in Zalla and then easily store it all at the house for later use over the duration of our stay.
The surrounding garden is very large and the swimming pool so much fun, despite being very cold as it is unheated (we understand this is like most swimming pools in Spain). The villa has lots of useful family-friendly amenities, e.g. a large barbecue area, a full sized pool table, table tennis table and table football. Our six children spent most of their time outdoors having great fun playing with all these games.
We are a family of eight and the villa felt very spacious for our needs, even leaving one spare bedroom that we didn't need to use.
The house was perfect in every way. Just a few days of clouds and rain put a temporary dampener on our holiday, but hey....this is the Basque Country! When the sun finally shone through though..we felt we were in paradise!
Thanks again to our host Antonio, for helping us experience a fantastic relaxing holiday in The Basque Country!