58 - El Hobbit - Bilbao

 Saturday, April 20 - Bilbao

I managed to wake up to my alarm and was out of bed by 8 AM but easily could have kept sleeping.  A look on Google Maps last night indicated a 2 - 2.5 hour drive to Bilbao and I wanted to be sure I had enough daylight to get the most out of my visit.  

The drive down to Spain went smoothly and I was impressed when I made a turn and saw the mountains of Urkiola Natural Park; I was very tempted to make a detour to inspect.  Shortly after seeing the mountains, I passed through a tunnel and started smelling sulfur on the other side, there must be a papermill or something operating nearby.  The odor reminded me of my time visiting plants that process similar materials and also have to contend with sulfur byproducts.  

I arrived in Bilbao around 10:30AM.  It was much too early to check into the hotel but I'd set a parking garage close to the hotel as my destination.  Without further ado, I parked in a surprisingly spacious parking garage and made my way to the tourist info office.  At the tourist office, I received a map of the city and a few recommendations of the "must do's" in the city.  

The slant across the windows caught my attention.  I enjoyed stretching my legs and I liked that the city still felt like it was waking up.  People were moving about but I kept getting this feeling like I was being let in on a secret or seeing a little something behind the curtain; maybe that's the feeling morning people are chasing?

Behind the tourist info office.  The sun was bright and warm but I kept my jacket handy cause the weather was crisp in the shade.  

From there, it was just a short walk to the casco viejo.  The old town was nice: cobbled pedestrian streets, bars/cafés, and a few shops.  The place felt lived in and life human sized with just a bit of the touristic veneer, I think there were maybe 3 plazas of note which seemed a decent number for how small the old town is.  After making several passes through streets, I made my way to the ribera mercado and then Plaza Nueva, where I had a pintxos lunch.  While I didn't get it at the river market, I'd seen someone else come away with a pintxo featuring a trimmed artichoke atop a morsel of bread and the image haunted me and set an unreasonable standard haha.

Crossing from the Abando neighborhood into the Casco Viejo

La ribera; a photo inside the restored market showed that a flood by this river basically exceeded the walls by about 15 feet!

The mercado was renewed but I felt it tastefully kept the original style while accommodating modern conveniences.  A plaque boasted it to be one of the largest indoor markets in Europe. The first floor was split between a bunch of pintxos bars and actual market-fare; the 2nd level was all market-fare.  

The windows let in a lot of natural light!

Skylights on the 2nd floor; there was a seafood stall with a huuuuge line of people.

More of the river (facing inland) from the market terrace

I like the Spanish method of having a device for drying clothes outside the window.

Two dogs sitting tight while Mom has her nails done.

Miguel Unamuno Plaza, the stairs coming down are part of El Camino Norte (or at least one of the routes)

I'm digging the water fountains I've found over here; just a push button with fat spigot, it's big enough to sip, cup your hands, fill a bottle, or stick your face under.

El Arenal park, there was an activity going on here to raise awareness about state-sanctioned violence in Nicuaragua

La Plaza Nueva; a truly enclosed plaza with space for kids to kick a ball around in the center.

Lunch time!  

A cafe con leche y una Carolina (apparently a classic pastry of Bilbao).  

From lunch, I made my way up to a park (Etxebarria) and decided to swing by the basilica; I hadn't originally planned to see the basilica given it was out of the way, but the taunting of the steeple was too great.  Overall, the basilica was closed and wasn't worth the extra walk but you miss all the shots you don't take.  At least it was a pleasant neighborhood and a sunny walk.  

The town hall of Bilbao

An old stack/chimney left behind in the park.  It was quite a climb from the town hall to the park, I was about to break a sweat.

The best shot of the basilica I could get 🤷‍♂️; I guess it's not the outside that counts but the reliquery/saint within that does.

An impressive gate to a cemetery turned park during the walk back down to the Casco Viejo

From the basilica, I worked my way back through the old town looped back to the car to grab my stuff and check into the hotel.  After freshening up at the hotel, I walked through the Abando part of town as I sought out the city's main attraction: the Guggenheim museum.  

A community center, apparently there's quite a few things inside this old arcade.  The exterior style is quite nice

This former palace looked impressive enough; the colors appear to be from different stones used instead of paint.

Made it to the Guggenheim!

"Puppy".  Closer inspection revealed a sculpture with mounted holes for plugs of flowers.  The closer inspection also revealed more pigeons than one would expect in a bed of flowers...

I spent about 3 hours in the museum.  It featured an audio-guide via one's phone but I found the audio loading to sometimes be unreliable; still it was nice to hear a bit about the pieces at (mostly) my own pace.  The fixed exhibit in the long hall was interesting, a bunch of flowing steel sheets calling to be touched and traced.  The third floor featured abstractism and pre-pop art, I found it surprising how many pieces got away with being untitled.  I jumped from the 1st to 3rd floor as I'd virtually cued to enter a mirror room; turns out the virtual cue didn't do anything and I waited 20 minutes for 45 seconds in a room of mirrors and lights with an elderly Dutch couple.  The 2nd floor was dedicated to pop-art and an exhibit about an Italian artist; I liked the pieces that had a bit of humor/irony to them, those moments of "oh, that's clever".  I still don't understand what propelled Andy Warhol to such fame; if his whole point was mass-producing art from mass-production techniques in a show of futility, then I think it's a fairly "meh" point to make.

The Frank Gehry design of the building was interesting, the fact that everything was moving kinda reminded me of the Gaudi's ridiculousness that I saw in Barcelona. 

These were some big steel sculptures; per a snippet from a documentary in the room at the end of the hall, the artist felt these sculptures needed to be indoors as their scale would be lost to the observer if outdoors.

Kinda neat to walk through a few of the sculptures.  Some sections felt like walking through a slot canyon.  Apparently each piece of steel stands freely on the concrete floor (no anchors) and the space between folds is open enough for humans to walk through at all points.

On the outside of the building, these fish scales provide a unique aesthetic.

Interesting that the museum was designed to incorporate/swallow the bridge.  

The covered terrace of the museum lets you see some of the outdoor sculptures but keeps you separate from the non-museum chaff walking along the river 😂

It's really hard to appreciate all the shapes of the building from within, I'm glad I took a loop all the way around after exiting.  

There was a concert in the park just outside the museum.  The music featured something that sounded like a whiny oboe, maybe it's a traditional Basque instrument?

From museum, I crossed over the river and worked my way to the funicular to get a view from above of the city.  The funicular loading system was a lot slower than I would have expected; even the locals seemed to wonder what was going on.  

More window-mounted clothes drying devices, featuring umbrellas to protect against the rain!

The view from the hillside over Bilbao

Bilbao was historically important as a port city, but it was an inland river port (kinda like Bordeaux) so there was quite a distance from here to the sea.  

At the top, there was also a path to the San Roke church observation point; I figured I'd give this one a shot too hoping it would have a better view of the sea.  Turns out the 2km route was to reach a small church who's view of the sea was completely obstructed by trees but offered a small window to view the Bilbao airport 🤦‍♂️.  A sign near the church mentioned that the mountains served as key defensive positions during the Spanish Civil War; that's about all my rudimentary Spanish could glimpse from the text (mostly from pictures 😅)

From a small break in the trees on the walk back from the church I could see the sea and industrial port.

From the funicular, I crossed back into Abando section.  It being almost 8, I poked my head into a few restaurants while working my way towards the Plaza Euskadi.  I did eventually settle on one, I asked for "un vaso de vino tinto" and pointed at a seafood salad (shrimp, octopus, peppers, and onions, swimming in olive oil) for a bite.  I'd thought it would just be a snack before a later dinner but it turned out to be my dinner for the night as it surprisingly sated me for the rest of the evening. 

An interesting concept for a bridge, I guess the curve of the walk balances with the opposite curve of the beam.

Ah, now we're talking: pintxos below and ham above.

The last light from the setting sun seemed to last until almost 10PM, once it faded completely I had completed my path along the river and had started making the route back to the hotel through Iturrizar park, which had some nice water features.     

Underneath another fancy, pedestrian bridge, I guess this is how most trolls see bridges anyhow

Outside the maritime history museum; I guess this area also had something like drydocks.  

There was some sort of rock/punk concert happening in the cafe of the maritime museum.  I could hear the music from a surprising distance away.

A lovely water feature to finish out the evening.  Just beyond lies a pond with a building I'm fairly certain housed some sort of peafowl (I could hear it calling).

Overall, I enjoyed my day here in Bilbao.  It's a nice city so I hesitate to say it but... I can't help but define Bilbao by the other cities I've visited.  It felt a bit like Barcelona, Pamplona, Tudela, and San Sebastian all in one; the balance of all these aspects makes Bilbao special but I feel each facet was done better by the "more specialized" cities.  I don't know if that makes sense (life isn't about which city does any one thing "best").  To be fair these were the thoughts I was developing on my walk back to the hotel; perhaps being tired from walking 14 miles today was clouding some of my thoughts.