Bilbao

I went to Bilbao for the day on Saturday with Jennis. We met Kara (living in Burgos) and Imanol, Kara's Basque boy from San Sebastian. Our bus left at 8:30 on Saturday morning, and now that I am paranoid about missing my bus, I woke up extra early. Fortunately I made it on time as did Jennis. We were a bit unexcited about the bus ride because we had tickets on the pueblo bus, which means, as you might guess, that the bus stops at multiple pueblos along the way. I am totally taking the pueblo bus every time. We stopped in Laguardia, Haro, and some other town that starts with an A and we passed several other pueblos. The views of the vineyards and the mountains were incredible, and even more so because the sun was just coming up. I took some video footage but it might be nausea-inducing since it's from a bus. Needless to say, it was a pleasant 2 hour bus ride to Bilbao.

We met Kara at the bus station and then just started walking towards the old part of town. The only thing I had heard about Bilbao was from my roommates, and that was that Bilbao is an ugly city. True, parts of it are ugly, but I feel like cities are allowed a little ugliness. The old part of Bilbao is really pretty and you can almost always see the mountains surrounding the city. The buildings are very staggered. I'm not sure how to describe it in words except I suppose that cities on hills are always like that. We walked to the old town and stopped into a cafe just across from the cathedral for breakfast and a much needed coffee. We had tortillas, which in Spain are not just flat circles of bread. It's similar to a potato omelette only it's cut like a quiche. Jennis and Kara noticed a large number of people overdressed for 10 am, and we decided that there must be a wedding at the cathedral across from us. We searched for the bride but she hadn't arrived yet, so we stopped into a Mango outlet. Right when we came out, we saw a volvo with white flowers on the windsheild pulling up in front of the cathedral, and out came the bride. She was, of course, beautiful, and it was really romantic and the bells rang when she walked into the cathedral and everyone was standing around watching her. Including a very strange and large camera crew we decided had nothing to do with the wedding as we saw them interviewing a storeowner down the street.

first: the bride
second: approaching the cathedral

We continued to walk through the old portion of town, and I really wanted to find a place to get a view of the city. We came upon a plaza with a large staircase at one end and decided to climb. We probably walked up 500 steps until we reached a park overlooking the city. The part of the park we found also had a football (soccer) field and an informal game was in session. We sat on a ledge overlooking the court for a while until Imanol called to say that he was parking (he drove from San Sebastian). We walked down the stairs and returned to the plaza where we sat at a wonderfully sunny cafe and had still more coffee and waited for Imanol. Once he joined us, we walked into the market as it was closing. Dad, you would have loved it. They sell everything there. And by everything, I mean every part of an animal and many animals whole. Immediately to the left of the entrance was a meat stand with 2 skinned pig heads and a baby pig in the counter. An entire dead baby pig costs 11.22 euros. We saw a lot of huge cow tongues and you could still see the tastebuds. We also saw whole unskinned rabbits hanging by their feet, uncooked cow brains, and an entire octopus with it's tentacles hanging out of the bin it was in. It was very fascinating. I can't believe that people know what to do with a whole fish or how to skin an animal. I like my food a little more removed from its former self. I only took one photograph because it would have been really touristy and disrespectful maybe to take one of everything, but I really really wanted to.

first: a plaza (I don't know the names of anything in Bilbao)
second: football match (?) and view from the park
third: Jennis at a cafe
fourth: the market, pigs's heads included.

After that, we set out in search of lunch (we basically ate and walked all day). It was a long process, but we ended up sitting in direct sunlight in one of the plazas (it was uncharacteristically warm and sunny in Bilbao on Saturday) and had tapas: cheese, chroquettes, iberian ham, chorizzo, and fried calamari. After lunch, we wandered to the Guggenheim, which was spectacular. We only went in to use the restroom because we didn't have enough time to see the museum properly, but we did a pretty thorough job of seeing the outside. There is a giant dog topiary by Jeff Koons in front of the building. And you can see the museum from a distance down the street off Gran Via, so the approach is nice. Jennis and I were sitting on the river side of the museum when a group of Brazilian men passed us all wearing matching parkas. The last man, Eduardo, asked if he could take our photograph? Jennis told him no, that we didn't know him, but then we introduced ourselves and he took our picture and told us we were "bellisima" or something to that effect. It was funny if a little strange, and we saw them later and they called out "hey, amigas de Eduardo." On the river side of the museum, there is a really tall bridge and you can take stairs up to it because there is a pedestrian path. That was scary, but I did it, and we all wandered over to an outdoor cafe right beside the museum. There were one million children there. Spanish children are dressed very well by their parents and they don't speak English which makes them slightly more tolerable than American children.

After another coffee, we walked Kara to the bus station as she had to leave at 7 pm, an hour before Jennnis. We said our goodbyes, bought our 8 pm bus tickets, and hung around the bus station (which is much less of a shady activity than it would be in the United States). We took a short walk to kill time, and I actually ran into one of my roommates, Sylvie. She and her boyfriend had just arrived in Bilbao from Logrono because he was returning to Germany early this morning. So that was strange to happen upon someone we knew. The bus ride home was nice as well. Practically everyone got off at the Haro stop so after the first hour, we were able to lean our seats back.

first: approaching the Guggenheim
second: the museum and the Koons
third: Kara, Imanol, and Jennis
fourth: me, Jennis, and Kara
fifth: the museum from under the bridge
sixth: on the way to the bus station