In Bilbao, before boarding the Costa Verde Express for a six-day journey along the coastline of the Cantabrian Sea and through the forested mountains of Northern Spain, we walk along the estuary towards the Guggenheim Museum. Its exterior, a series of soaring complex curves, is just one of many fascinating aspects of this contemporary art museum designed by award-winning architect Frank Gehry. There’s such outdoor art as the startling Maman, a 30-foot high and 33-foot-wide giant spider is one of the largest such sculptures in the world hunkered down along the esplanade and Puppy, a 43-foot tall West Highland terrier composed of bedding plants. Fronting the entrance of the museum, it is the world’s largest flower sculpture.

Though it’s not art, another standout, for anyone who doesn’t know the history of this region, are the men dressed in kilts playing bag pipes as they sit by the waterside.

It turns out that Celtic culture is part of the fabric of Northern Spain, interwoven for more than a millennium. That is among the many discoveries that make traveling through España Verde or “Green Spain,” which includes the regions of Asturias, Cantabria, Galicia, and Basque Country, so fascinating. Another is the weather. Unlike much of the country \where the climate is mostly Mediterranean, Green Spain with its oceanic currents, is lush and green.

Michelin stars

But like the rest of the country, Green Spain is lauded for the quality of its gastronomy and the quantity of its Michelin stars—33 as of last year spread across 23 restaurants including Nerua, the Michelin one-star restaurant at the Guggenheim. Here, the seasonal menu reflects the local cuisine but with innovative twists in such dishes as fried cod with spider crab and bizkaina, a sauce made with red choricero peppers that grow nearby and pantxineta, a traditional Basque dessert made with puff pastry, cream, and almonds recreated with pumpkin cream, bergamot, and beer ice cream.

After lunch we explore the Casco Viejo, or Old Town, a seven-street neighborhood dating back to the 15th century. It’s the city’s oldest section with soaring churches such as San Nicolás and San Juan and the Gothic-style Cathedral Basilica of Saint James and the Neo-Classical buildings surrounding Plaza Nueva. Bilbao is a very walkable city and Casco Viejo is lively, its stunning history melding well with its friendly and popular pintxo bars where people gather for glasses of sherry and share small plates of food.

Bilbao is very easy to navigate on foot. This year, Resonance Consultancy, an advisor in tourism, real estate and economic development, named it among the World's Best Cities for walkability.

After a cruise down the Nervión River towards the Cantabrian Sea, we leave the water to travel along a winding road that rises high into the hills outside of Bilbao to Kate Zaharra, a restaurant made of remnants—wood, stone, roofs, window and frames, doors and artifacts-- of ancient hamlets long since fallen into ruins. Set high on plateau, we could see the far away lights of Bilbao from mullioned windows, taken from an abandoned manor, as we dined on traditional Basque cuisine--platters of beans with crayfish, fresh seafood caught in Biscayne Bay that day and, of course, this being Spain, Iberia ham, sliced paper thin and served with local cheeses and wines.

A historic train

And then on to Concordia Station railway station where we boarded the Costa Verde Express. Operated by RENFE, a Spanish train company that offers several historic train routes and lines, our trip will by rail will be on restored 1920s Pullman cars upgraded for modern amenities while retaining its original luxe touches—think sleek and glossy wood paneled compartments, white linen and fine China in the dining car, waitstaff in formal attire, a bartender who won an award for his gin and tonics, and exquisite cuisine. It is like an immersion into the old-world charm of a period movie—cue Agatha Christie’s detective Hercule Poirot.

Breakfast is served by liveried waitstaff, immaculately dressed and extremely professional, this is no hash and eggs joint or a sausage and egg sandwich to go like when traveling on my own. And, of course, there’s the backdrop of scenery rolling by—stately stands of woods, small quays where colorful fishing boats bob up and down in the water, small Medieval villages with cobblestone streets, buildings washed in light pastel shades their window boxes overflowing with blooms, ancient fountains, and the rugged and stunning shoreline.

Discoveries and experiences are the bywords as we make our way to the journey’s end where we’ll disembark one last time in Santiago de Compostela, a Cathedral city, and the end point for travelers along the Way of St. James, a pilgrim route for over a millennium.

Each day a motor car awaits at the station where we arrive in the early hours, ready to whisk us to a cathedral, restaurant, castle, village, or town.

Mondoñedo

The experiences are varied but all immerse us into the culture, heritage, and history of this region of Spain. Gastronomy is high on my list, no matter whether it’s a swank restaurant or street food. And the latter is what we find when walking the streets of Mondoñedo, a small village in the province of Lugo on the Cantabrian Sea. Here pescadores or fishermen have set up a makeshift kitchen under an awning next to the 16th-century Romanesque-style Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption. Steam was just beginning to rise from the kettles of boiling water set atop open flames as an assembly line of fishermen/cooks deftly chopped cooked octopus and adding a splash of local olive oil before serving to the waiting crowd.

One fisherman (and they were all men at least that day), seeing my notebook and camera, beckons me forward, handing me a long, pointed pole.

It's simple, he tells me, opening one of several large coolers of pink octopus with their large sucker-covered tentacles nestled in beds of ice, demonstrating by spearing one and plopping it into the boiling water. Easy enough, I think, following his lead and then taking handfuls of lemon slices, dried oregano, and cloves of garlic, tossing them into the water as well.

There's a first for everything and before I know it, I've cooked an octopus that earlier that morning swam in the sea.

Antonio Gaudi’s ''El Capricho''

In the seaside village of Comillas, Antonio Gaudi, at the time a little-known architect, designed El Capricho, his first house in 1883. A bachelor summer pad for a wealthy lawyer, the house is a kaleidoscope of colors, textures, a minaret-like tower, bands of ceramic sunflowers and leaves, and hardly a straight line. Gaudi liked curves because, as he said, “there are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature.”

Reflective of Gaudi’s orientalist period and one of the few places he built outside of Catalonia, it is now a museum, each room a delight of surprises from doors leading out onto parapets overlooking the sculpted gardens, door and window handles shaped like musical notes, a solarium filled with flowering plants, colorful terracotta tiles, and Moorish flourishes. Like the musical piece its named after, El Capricho is whimsical, charming, and capricious.

Cheese and cider in Asturias

In Gijon, it’s foggy and slightly rainy, but we’ve been given Green Spain rain gear to wear, we visit Auga, another Michelin restaurant located in Asturias on the waterfront. Another surprise, at least for me. This region is known for its ciders, it produces approximately 80% of the cider made in Spain, as there are lots of apple trees, their branches laden down with bright red and yellow globes as well as cheese, some of which mature in nearby caves. And we’re treated to a tasting of the vast varieties available here including several hard ciders like Trabanco with its rich yeasty flavor.

Celebrating the chestnut tree in Galicia

Chestnuts are part of the tradition of Galicia and as we travel past manor homes in a patchwork quilt of meadows, woods, and farmland, we learn that the fruit of the tree is so popular that school children are given the day off during harvest season to participate in gathering the nuts.

We don’t stop for chestnuts but instead pull up in front of O Forno de Tovar in Lourenza, a 16th century fortress and former family home with thick stone walls surrounding a courtyard. We drink glasses of Albariño, a wine made from a varietal grape that flourishes in this region. Dinner is made in a wood burning oven—roasted lamb, scallops, mussels, and Caldo Gallego, a stew of chorizo and the white beans for which this area is known for. We finished the meal with cups of cremaet, a burnt coffee drink that I’ve never encountered before. It’s pretty with distinct layers of colors and ingredients made with coffee, cream, and burnt rum adorned with a cinnamon stick and citrus peel.

I don’t, I announce to the group, as I take my last sip of coffee, want to go home.