It’s currently free, for the brave and hearty souls that make the trek. Plans are being mulled to curtail the number of cars, or even to levy a fee to walk the steps. According to El Pais, local tourism authorities, meanwhile, are struggling to find a way to keep the landmark from physically crumbling under the pressure of so many visitors. Thus far it has been clanging nonstop all summer. Traditionally, visitors and pilgrims have come to San Juan de Gaztelugatxe to have their chance to ring the church’s bell at the end of the long and winding walk for luck and to keep away the evil eye.

But even the name sounds like it hails from Game of Thrones: Gaztelugatxe, in Euskera, the Basque native tongue, literally means “Castle Rock.” The islands are rich in many sought after resources, including gems, various. The Summer Isles are a group of islands in the Summer Sea, located southeast of Westeros and southwest of Volantis. In a millennium of pilgrimages, San Juan de Gaztelugatxe has never seen tourism numbers like these. This name generator will give you 10 random Summer Islander names, part of both the Game of Thrones tv show and the A Song Of Ice And Fire book series. Those 241 steps that Daenerys and Jon Snow walk are part of the very real, roughly 1,000-year-old, man-made land bridge leading out to a monastery named for Saint John the Baptist, which is tethered to the coast by a wisp of land and a bridge. (The steps are real the palace, in the show, is computer generated).

Some 75,000 tourists walked, literally, in the steps of Daenerys this July.Īccording to the Spanish daily El Pais, that means some 2,400 people a day, made the monumental schlep up a narrow and crumbling flight of ancient stairs in order to feel a touch closer to the mother of dragons. Now that’s happening in real life as well, as Game of Thrones acolytes come to bend the knee at the actual location of Dragonstone - the steps leading to San Juan de Gaztelugatxe, a church and one-time monastery, near the village of Bakio in the Basque region of Spain. From Dorne to the Iron Islands to the North, visitors arrived to bend the knee. Daenerys Targaryen came home across the Narrow Sea to Dragonstone in season seven of Game of Thrones.

Summer islands game of thrones