The American Literary West III International Conference

The American Literary West III International Conference will take place on October 2014. From the 8th to the 10th of that month we would be delighted if you had a chance to come to Vitoria-Gasteiz and participate in our conference. For those of you who are presenting a paper or those of you who are planning to come, we want to give you some tips so that you can start planning your trip.

In what follows, you will find information on how to get to Vitoria-Gasteiz and, if needed, where to stay. If you have any further inquiry, don't hesitate to ask. You can either use the email address for the conference or just write your comment here.

In short, we will be updating this blog so that you can find more information on how to register for our conference and any other additional announcement we'd need to make. Please, stay tuned and if you have questions, use any of the channels that we already mentioned before.  

And, just as we usually do, if you feel like listening to some music while you read all this information, let me tell you that we are happy to invite you to listen to Willy Vlautin's last music challenge. Right at the bottom of this entry you'll find a link to listen to his last band, The Delines, from youtube.com. If you want to listen to more music by The Delines, click here. 

How to Get to Vitoria-Gasteiz

Vitoria-Gasteiz (Vitoria is Spanish, Gasteiz is Basque) is the capital city of the autonomous community of the Basque Country in northeastern Spain. If you wish to know more about it you can visit any of the following links: wikipedia, the official website of the city council or the BasqueCountry tourist office website.

Vitoria-Gasteiz has very good train connections. If you are train traveling lover, you may want to check the RENFEwebsite (national railway company) and see if train traveling is your best option to come to Vitoria-Gasteiz. If you choose to fly, you will need to use more than one means of transport because you can’t make it right to Vitoria-Gasteiz by plane. Vitoria-Gasteiz has its own airport but this is only use for freight transport at the moment. You can go for any of the two following travel plans if you are choosing this travel option:

From Bilbao

If you are flying, probably, the best (meaning cheapest) way to get to Vitoria-Gasteiz is to fly to Bilbao InternationalAirport. This is the nearest airport with international connections. If you are flying overseas then you’ll probably have to travel in two steps, via Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid or London. It is also worth mentioning that there are some low-fare companies operating to and from Bilbao (Easyjet, Air Berlin, Vueling…)

If you feel like coming right to Vitoria-Gasteiz after you landed in Bilbao, you’ll need to go first to Termibus, Bilbao’s main bus station. There, you’ll be able to catch a bus to Vitoria-Gasteiz. But before that, you need to come from Bilbao International Airport to the city center, which is about half an hour away from the airport. You can easily catch a shuttle bus from the one and only bus stop that you’ll find outside arrivals. The ticket is cheap and you pay directly at the bus. They come every 20-30 minutes and the ride only takes about 20-25 minutes. You have to stay on the bus until the last stop in Bilbao, which is that of Termibus. You can check the schedules here. The only other way to get from the Airport to Termibus would be to take a taxi (a bit faster, but much more expensive, around 20-30 euros).

Once in Termibus, you can take a bus to Vitoria-Gasteiz. The company running these buses is called LaUnión, and you can check the schedules here. Direct buses take around one hour and it will amount for about 6 euros. You have to buy your tickets at the La Unión ticket booth in Termibus.

Tip: we wouldn’t recommend you to get a taxi from Bilbao to Vitoria-Gasteiz. Vitoria-Gasteiz is about sixty miles away from Bilbao and it would be very expensive to make that trip by taxi.

From Madrid

Another option would be to fly to Madrid first. In that case, there are two options available for you:

1)        To arrive to Vitoria-Gasteiz by train. You need first to travel from the Adolfo Suarez International Airport (formerly known as Barajas) to Chamartín train station by metro. Take metro line 8 to Mar de Cristal and from there then take line 4 to Pinar de Chamartín first and then line 1 to Chamartín. Once in Chamartín Railway Station you can take a train to Vitoria-Gasteiz. There are around seven trains connecting Madrid and Vitoria-Gasteiz every day and prices range from 40 to 60 euros approximately. The trip takes around three to five hours. You can check schedules and prices here. And if you want to check the metro timetable, you can visit the following website: metro Madrid.

2)        To arrive to Vitoria-Gasteiz by bus. The company running the buses from Madrid to Vitoria-Gasteiz is called Alsa. You have a ticket office at Adolfo Suarez International Airport (Barajas) but these buses leaving from the airport run only from Madrid to Bilbao. You can buy a ticket to Vitoria-Gasteiz, but you’ll probably have to make a stop in Bilbao. There are only a few buses making this trip from the airport to Bilbao and they won’t probably fit with your flying plans. If these is so, you’ll have to do the following:

If you want to travel directly to Vitoria-Gasteiz or you couldn’t make it on time to take one of the buses leaving from the airport, you need to go first to Madrid Bus Station in Avenida de América. There is a metro line from the Airport to Avenida de América. You need to take metro line number 8 to Colombia and then metro line 9 to Avenida de América. In any case, you can go to metro Madrid official website by using the link that I gave you before. And, of course, you can also take a taxi cab. The trip from Madrid to Vitoria-Gasteiz takes around four hours and a half and the ticket is 27-30 euros approx. There are many buses every day and tickets can be bought at the bus station or online.

Once in Vitoria-Gasteiz

The American Literary West III International Conference will take place at the Faculty of Arts of the University of the Basque Country (check the website if you want to know more about us: Faculty of Arts).

All distances (from bus or train stations or from most of the hotels to the conference venue, also from the conference venue to the old town, the city center or shopping areas) are all walking distances, sometimes, even in pedestrian ways.

Vitoria-Gasteiz is a friendly city, well known for its many running lovers, an easy-to-bike city and it is appreciated and celebrated for its green areas and parklands (in 2012, the city was awarded the European Green Capital recognition). So get ready to make a lot of walking and forget about subways and taxi cabs. However, since 2008, the city enjoys a tramwaysystem that can be very useful if your hotel happens to be in a distant area.

Where to Stay in Vitoria-Gasteiz

Vitoria-Gasteiz has a good range of lodging possibilities. In the following table, you’ll find a list of hotels, hotel ratings, the average room prices for an individual room (you better check this again before choosing one or the other), estimated distance to the conference venue and a link to the corresponding website so that you can book your room. Please, remember that we do not have any kind of agreement with any of these hotels and you are free to choose. Of course, our list here is not accurate or interested. You can check the whole list that Vitoria-Gasteiz City Council proposes to every tourist coming to visit the city here.

Before we copy here the aforementioned list of hotels, please, remember that if you want to stay in Bilbao or Donostia-San Sebastián before or after the conference, you may want to check the official websites to get more information (you can do it here and here). We don’t recommend to stay in any of these two cities and then commute to the conference. That would mean about an hour from Bilbao and an hour and half from Donostia-San Sebastián every day.

If the following table is too small for you to have a good reading, you’ll find another copy on pdf format at the end of this entry.

List of Hotels

Hotel	Rating	Average Prices (Individual Room)	Distance from venue (walking)	website
Gran Hotel Lakua	5	90-110 euros	50 mts	http://www.granhotelakua.com/
Hotel Boulevard	4	68-90 euros	30 mts	http://www.boulevardvitoriahotel.com/
NH Canciller Ayala	4	70-90 euros	10 mts	http://www.nh-hotels.com/
Silken Ciudad de Vitoria	4	73-106 euros	10 mts	http://www.hoteles-silken.com/hoteles/ciudad-vitoria/
Abba Jazz Vitoria	3	60-70 euros	8 mts	http://www.abbahoteles.com/es/index.html
AC General Álava	3	67-105 euros	20 mts	http://www.espanol.marriott.com/hotels/travel/vitge-ac-hotel-general-alava/
Centro Vitoria	2	36-41 euros	8 mts	http://www.hotelcentrovitoria.com/
Dato	2	32-36 euros	7 mts	http://www.hoteldato.com/
Please, remember that prices are in euros, distances in minutes and that we highly recommend to check again prices and availability by visiting the corresponding websites.

In the following link you’ll find a map in which you can find all these hotels tagged and you can study distances and locations:  https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zMAQx3P_T8yk.kSAewPknHqbY

(copy this link if needed and paste it in your search bar)

Just in case you have any trouble with the direct links we offered within the text, here you have a complete list of all the websites we have recommended to visit:

Vitoria-Gasteiz Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitoria-Gasteiz

Vitoria-Gasteiz City Council Official Website: http://www.vitoria-gasteiz.org/

Basque Country Tourism: http://tourism.euskadi.net/en/

RENFE: http://www.renfe.com/

Bilbao International Airport: http://www.aeropuertodebilbao.net/es/

Shuttle-Bus Bilbao Airport: http://www.aena-aeropuertos.es/csee/Satellite/Aeropuerto-Bilbao/es/Page/1237554477328/

Autobuses La Unión: http://www.autobuseslaunion.com/es/

Chamartín Railway Station: http://www.adif.es/en_US/infraestructuras/estaciones/17000/informacion_000295.shtml

Metro Madrid: http://www.metromadrid.es/es/index.html

ALSA Bus Company: http://www.alsa.es/en/

Avenida de América Bus: http://www.spain.info/es/informacion-practica/transportes/estaciones-autobus/madrid/estacion_de_autobuses_de_avenida_de_america.html

Faculty of Arts: http://www.ehu.es/en/web/letrak/home

Vitoria Tramway: http://www.euskotren.es/es/tranviavitoria

Bilbao: www.bilbao.net/

Donostia-San Sebastián: www.donostia.org/

List of hotels in pdf format: click here.

To see all this information in pdf format: click here (please, take into account that direct links to websites don’t work in this format)

If you need any further information, please feel free to make any comment in this entry and we will try to give you further guidance.

REWEST

The American Literary West III International Conference

Vitoria-Gasteiz, October 8-10 2014.