XTREME PASSPORT OctoberFest Kings Day
Las Fallas
The Wine Fight
Ibiza Weekender
Running of the Bulls
La Tomatina
Les Fetes de Bayonne
Morocco Surf Palace
Semana Grande
Fringe Fest Sonar Barcelona
The What?
The Xtreme passport takes you to some of the best parties, Surf camps and events all over Europe and we promise you will have an amazing time meeting with new and exciting (and probably fairly drunken) people in the process. Perfectly combines with low-cost airline tickets or European hop on hop off bus passes. Fully flexible and you can decide where you want to go with only 1 weeks notice. With the Xtreme passport it’s shaping up to be the best European summer ever.
Passport Options Whether you are scrounging down the back of the couch for loose change to make your travel plans a reality, or you have successfully raided the bank mum and dad with some dubious promise about “ having a constructive gap year”, we have a Passport to suit your Budget! So there’s really no excuse as to why you can’t join us and have the most amazing summer of your life. The only thing that’s really stopping you is you. But don’t take our word for it, hear it from the big dog.
More events added soon so contact us for help with planning your trip.
Highlights Sitges Carnival – Barcelona, Spain Las Fallas Festival – Valencia, Spain Spring Beer-Fest – Munich, Germany Kings Day – Amsterdam, The Netherlands The Wine Fight (San Vino) – Haro, Spain Running of the Bulls (San Fermin) – Pamplona, Spain
Surf Camp Spain – San Sebastian, Spain (Basque Country) Les Fetes de Bayonne Festival – Bayonne, France. Semana Grande Festival – San Sebastian, Spain (Basque Country)
The Ultimate European Festivals
BBK Live Music Fest – Bilbao, Spain (Basque Country) Ibiza Weekender – Spain Van Surfari – Spain and France Yacht Surfari – Spain and France
Do Them All!
San Juan Festival- Barcelona, Spain Sonar Festival – Barcelona, Spain Fringe Fest – Edinburgh, Scotland La Tomatina – Valencia, Spain Oktoberfest – Munich, Germany Morocco Surf Palace – Agadir/ Taghazoute, Morocco Rolling Circus – 3 nights on bus around Europe
Wine Fight San Vino
San Vino, as we call it, La Batalla de Vino de Haro, as the locals call it, is a full on war path in the middle of the vineyard and we own it. All's fair in love and wine battles. We take a bus from Barcelona or San Sebastiรกn to the small town of Haro, we party in our campsite and have dinner together to plan strategies for the battle.
We then pay last regards and walk into a town with your classic Spanish street festival. If you've never been to a Spanish street festival, holy vineyard... this is the one. Bands everywhere, open drinking in the streets and in the morning we all go throw wine on each other.
Ockoberfest
You may be wondering why Oktoberfest is held in such high regard by your previously well travelled friends. "What's the big deal?" You say, "it's just old fat drunk men singing unintelligible songs on tables and hugging each other." Sounds like your best nightmare, or your worst high school sleepover, right? To you I contend that it is both, and much more, and also not quite that. No camaraderie is as strong and breaks as many barriers as that of beer, that destroys whatever divides a drunken German man from singing with a proud androgynous teenaged adult. Welcome to the rainbow of the human condition, amplified by ridiculous rides, slurring, good mateship and, I really just can't emphasise this enough, singing on tables with beers while thousands watch you in good spirits. Lo, this be the good times.
Surf Camp Spain Many of our festivals and events have our surf camp as the base. Whether you surf or not you will love it here.
The awesome crew will look after you at the surf camp!
Whether you’re into surfing or not at some point during your European trip you should end up on the beaches of San Sebastian. Set in the Basque country in Northern Spain you have Atlantic waves and Spanish hospitality. It’s the perfect place to Some waves and have a good time and there is no better place to do this than at our surf camp. Easily accessible through Bilbao or Santander. This will be your prime location during the following trips. Running of the bulls | San Juan | Bayonne | Semana Grande
Sonar Festival
Sonar is one of the biggest dates in the Barcelona calendar. A music festival of legendary proportions, every June it rocks the city set at different venues all day and all night over a three-day period. You can join us at sonar as one of your Xtreme Passport options. Hint combine this with the Barcelona ConneXion & Surf Camp.
Semana Grande
This is the biggest festival in Santander’s calendar. Translated as the big week it hosts some of the worlds biggest firework competitions, loads of live acts and is basically one massive street party that goes on for the entire week. It’s a great way to enjoy Midsummer, and quite a good warmup to the Tomatino festival. You can easily combine doing this with the surf camp, before heading over to the Barcelona conneXion down through the Balearic islands for the Ibiza Weekender before finally ending up in Valencia for the Tomatino.
Barcelona ConneXion
A welcome drink downtown, walking tour, boat party, & central accommodation in this awesome city makes the Barcelona Connection a great stopover on your itinerary. Awesome crew will make sure you have an incredible experienceas you check out the city and meet people from all over the world. See more here.
Las Fallas Valencia
The Festival of fire. Valencia on March 19. The day has been set pretty much in stone since the 18th century. The trip departs Barcelona after the Barcelona ConneXion.
Spring Beer Fest
Well this is like Oktoberfest. Except it’s not in October. We set it over spring break, Easter holidays to us Europeans. Germany can be quite cold in October, but set in spring is just lovely. And who doesn’t want to drink beer in the sunshine?
Tomatino Xtreme Tomatina or how I learned to love the tomato When I grew up, every weekend and school break I would head to my grandparents´ house in Italy while my mother and father left to Florida. I would stay there for many days, weeks even, sometimes up to 13 days, nearly a half moon! My nonno (grandad), every morning, used to wake me up, slapping me in the face with a cooked breakfast and say to me, "Now we learn to be the man", before taking me out 'to the fields'. Over and over he would force me to eat the ripest strawberries, the longest carrots, the strongest goats. He fed me, and fed me. Until one day I could not eat a single other potato. This day he bent down to my face and he spat at me, with prideful resentment, "Now you can have the real fruit, “the tomato." We left that day, with 6 pounds of tomatoes, and we made every meal for the next week with tomatoes. I could not eat another tomato. It was not possible. This was the day I swore never to see my family again, and fled to Spain.
I continued to not eat for 4 years. This year, I eat. Then I discovered a festival where I can shove food into other people's faces. Say What? Sweet revenge is what. Here, have a tomato. La Tomatina.... my redemption. The world convenes on a small town in August, but once a year, and the Santa Claus, the Kringle, the all mighty Krampaus of tomatoes descend on Bu単ol to make havoc. It is the world's biggest foodfight, famous for it's hedonism and Eco-friendly vegetarianism.
Where as other Spanish festivals call you to run and kill with bulls, or dance with beers and meet all those near, this one facilitates you smashing fruit (vegetables) in the faces of your travelling companions, other nationalities, and sometimes bulls. We camp down in Valencia, near to the festival and we go to a water and wine festival the night before, bloody mary's the next morning, club pool party the next night, just like nonno would have wanted. You too can be the man (or woman) with a mitten-full of tomato pulp.
Sitges Carnival
Sitges Is referred to as the St Tropez of Spain. It’s the gay capital of Spain as well so what better place to have a Rio-like Carnival. The Sitges Carnival will not disappoint. Much cheaper getting there than Brazil.
Les Fetes de Bayonne Festival
This is basically like Running of the Bulls but in France. Running with la Boeuf.
As a Passport holder you are Eligible for Fetes de Bayonne transport plus 3 nights all-inclusive package at our surf camp including unlimited beer & sangrĂa.
Ibiza Weekender
This island needs no introduction. Come spend the weekend in Ibiza the clubbing capital of the world. You can take the boat from Barcelona, Or go Jetset on EasyJet. Handy if you have just attended sonar Festival or the Barcelona conneXion. That means you can add on Majorca afterwards before hitting Valencia.
Ibiza Weekender
Benicassim
Benicassim Benicassim is one of those festivals we love just because it really doesn't matter who plays. The Bingy bongys? The sha la lalaylas? The wingy dingy who-nows? Whatever. The town becomes a beautiful festival in itself. Don't get us wrong, it's an awesome lineup every year, and it's organised so well that you can't go to the loo without someone helping you out to where you need to go and how you need to do it. It's in the middle of a desert, for 4 days, next to a beach, in a sleepy town with fountains and public libraries and municipal facilities that let you do whatever you want for those four precious, special little days. It started as the little festival that could, and became the big festival that did. It's everything you want, and not much more. But why would you need more? It's everything you want. So stop asking. When we go, we rock the shit out of it. Everyone moves to our set and learns to our grooves, and once again we get reminded why our friends and us get proclaimed the monarchy of dance, every single night. Self-proclaimed. But still. Jealousy it seems, takes many forms. One of the best festivals is always the one where you needn't worry for showering, taking naps, snaps and chicken wraps because you can do all that at the beach tomorrow, and then head on back to the festival that night. Year after year this tiny Spanish town takes us in with our blowup Lilo mattresses in the town fountains, in the beaches, on the hills, on top of crowds, the limit is with your imagination, my new friends. The festival has a stellar lineup every time and an excellent Spanish reputation for making you sweat out your sleep from about 5 am til 9am, and then it's straight down the beach til the music starts again at 4pm. I'm telling you, Benicassim is raw and it's great and when it is all included? You'd be stupid not to.
Kings Day Amsterdam Pass the Duchie... They're tall, they're polite, they have an excellent work ethic and somehow a country smaller than my thumb that has economically conquered sub continents. Plus, they speak English better than me, and last time I went to King's day, (then, Queen's day), they proved they could party better than me. Sure. I could sit on a boat all day, dressed in Orange and drink Heinekens, like a hot Dutch guy, but maybe I wanted to spend half an hour in the toilet and then go to bed by 3pm? Maybe that's what I wanted to do! This is the first King's day in years, the Queen has bowed out, and this new King is a badass, and he wants to have all the super crazhy good timeszh for all the people in der Neederlands. That's you, with us. Just like all of our festivals there's street drinking, bands, parades, carnival rides, DUTCH PEOPLE, and good times. Unlike most of our festivals, this time we got a boat and a marketplace, plus an optional 3 hour booze cruise through the central canals (for only 40 big ones). In Amsterdam we'll jump on a yacht, (albeit, a small, canal like yacht, probably otherwise known as a houseboat) and float idly like we own the joint, there's a free market where you can sell all goods you have to fund some more beers, and/or buy more crap you don't need. There's indian food on the street, there's gay districts on balconies, there's fun, Holland style everywhere. I can't tell you how much fun this day is. King's night, it's King's day, it's King time, it's F-King awesome.
Fringe Edinburgh
Come hit Edinburgh’s fringe Festival with us, it’s a bit weird but it’s also rather amusing.
4 Day/ 3 night Road Trip
5 options, all starting in Barcelona and hitting San Sebastian, Granada, Madrid, Sevilla, Valencia. 4 options include the awesome country of Portugal, which Spain always wished they had, because holy inquisition is it pretty. Options for Malaga, Porto, Ibiza, Lagos and all sorts are available (see below). With types of tours around every city, both partying and cultural, this is your greatest option to spend three weeks hot, sweaty, dazed, damaged and confused. It's a liberating thought that will excite you (and us) from now until then, it's a bit of adventure through heat, festivals, beaches and new cities. It'll be amazing.
It's a sacred and hallowed institution for many criminals, deadbeats, and backpackers and Xtreme Gappers. As many of our best days have been those shared on the road. Sleeping on the car, in the ground, over a shoulder, on your pants, yessir, even the pants you were just wearing. Pants as a pillow, travelling just like Don Quixote de la Mancha. Don't worry about driving, don't worry about rules, and don't worry about pants, because it's hot in the middle of Spain. For those who bemoan the current trend of crappy budget flights, rigid train authorities or for those who just miss old school travel or moving within any country with misquoted timetables, inconvenient rail tracks and long routes with which to transport goods and materials. Or just for those who've just never got on the road and seen the best of the Iberian Peninsula, wipe those teary eyes and prepare to get them bloodshot through dust, wind, sangria and asphalt. Sounds great? It is. With that in mind we have 5 new Spanish and Portuguese road trips this year, slapping together our best Summer festivals and our favourite cities. Come on one of our road trips, if only to check the maps, change the music, and clean the windshield.
Please note as a passport holder you can join us for 2 days on the road trip or book this in the entirety here.
Running Of The Bulls
The Running of the Bulls is the quintessential Spanish festival, spoken of across the world, in hushed tones and braggart bar yells. The Running of the Bulls is famous, and revered amongst travelers who enjoy running, bulls, and articles and prepositions. Let me tell you how it works‌ It is an eight day festival of which the Bulls are only a part. At night there are world famous fireworks competitions, hedonistic street parades with multiple live bands, reveling and drinking, dancing, all with the knowledge that tomorrow you may be running with a beast who could kill you with but a flick of the head.
If you're scared/slow/anti the event, you do not need to run with the bulls.
Watching them running at 8am is a once in a lifetime event in itself. We do not condone the traditional bull fighting part of the festival either and do not include tickets to that. When we facilitate a festival where you run on the horns of massive beasts and we say we make it more Xtreme you know we mean it.We have our own festival outside the festival at our legendary campsite in Zarautz with buses running back and forth all day. You can stay with us as long as you like. If you choose to go into the bulls in the morning, good luck to you and Godspeed, if you choose to stay in our site and chill on the beach, or go for a surf, we can help you out with that too. Every night is a party, and every night we have some new stuff going on, whether it's a DJ, carnival, live band, sacrificial burning at the stake, political drunken debate, who knows? We decide on the day. One thing we can be sure of though, is you will most certainly be a part of it and it will be the experience of a lifetime.
Rolling Circus Find me a kid who didn't dream of running off and joining the circus and I'll find you a kid aware of the various social taboos, limited economic potential and inevitable mental scarring of getting a job working for an entertainment company that's in the business of torturing animals for the attention of the baying hounds that they call customers. That's a clever kid. When you meet this poor child, hug him. But I digress. Our rolling circus does away with these ethical issues and makes it a circus just about you! You and our other mates and our Europe! We roll, we glide, we hip hop dippity slide to our favourite cities in Europe, making the party as we go, and bringing more people on our trip as we can fit. We hit all the best festivals, we take live bands, there are no rules, and our driver is my best friend, you'll meet him soon and you'll love him like I do.
Where: Starting at La Tomatina in Valencia, then Barcelona, Paris, Bruges, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Budapest and ending in Munich for Oktoberfest When: Starts in late August and ends when we run out of steam (most likely late September). How: We'll pick you up wherever you are...
Eat: The specialties of the countries. Inclusions: Transport, accommodation, breakfasts, drinks specials, massive party in every city, guides and walking tours everywhere we go, the most fun you can have on two legs.
The world's biggest food fight with tomatoes in Spain? Yeah we do that. Oktoberfest? We end there! Paris, Belgium, Prague, Budapest, a whole shitload of Spain. That's a tick. It's the best way to see the coolest cities, and we make our own parties in every city we go! We just invite everyone we meet along the way!
Rolling Circus
Getting Around There are great ways to do this. Either with our hop on hop off passed (West Loop or Go West) or Flexipasses. If Bus travel ain´t your thing you can fly around Europe for peanuts on Easy jet and Ryan air. Check Skyscanner for details. Much of the action takes place over summer time in Spain.
The Rules Ladies & Gentlemen
Inform reservations by phone or email only 7 days before your desired arrival to guarantee your place. Holders of the pass are entitled to unlimited booze at campsite locations and cheap/free booze deals at other destinations (excluding morocco and Ibiza). You can specify your own startdate for the Passport The Passport is valid for one Year one year from date of purchase The Passport is non-refundable or transferable should you not use any of your entitlement.
The cheapest, most flexible & best way to hit all of the European festivals & events.
WHAT WHEN AND HOW What: The Xtreme Passport The Xtreme Passport. The best fun you can have with your clothes on. Includes: Two, three, six or ten festivals of your choice see individual page for inclusions. Excludes: International flights, meals spending money. When: Fully flexible valid for one Year see each festival or event for specific start dates. How to join:
On the programme page you will find a book Now button. We check availability and get back to you asap! Questions: Email us for all your questions, We will get straight back to you! info@xtremegapyear.co.uk Connect with us on facebook and be the first to know about new trips and great Travel deals.
Xtreme gap Xtreme Gap UK: www.xtremegapyear.co.uk / info@xtremegapyear.co.uk Xtreme Gap AU: www.xtremegapyear.com.au / info@xtremegapyear.com.au Xtreme Gap NL: www.xtreme-gap.nl / info@xtreme-gap.nl
Need help? Get in touch