To Bilbao, 10.8 miles
Ok, today was an entirely different experience. Sunny, perfect bit of a breeze, only 7 miles (kept walking in town thus higher mileage) over the mountains and that hill that looked so big turned out to be manageable without a ton of mud. Just a gorgeous hike. Wish Rick could have been with us!
Starting by filling water bottles – fountains are pretty frequent, happily!
Baby photo for the day
We arrived in Bilbao – big city! We followed the camino trail pretty far, but since it tries hard to stick to the original and through parks to be as much as it was, we ended up cutting off and following Matthew and his GPS through the city to get down the hill a bit more easily. That being said it was really downhill within the city. San Francisco has nothing on these city hills. Crazy. Used my poles to try to save my knees. At one point, we took one of those elevators that carry you down the hill. I did NOT like it because it’s way out in the air and then you can see through the front so I just closed my eyes and let my knees give their thanks. And then – we were there!
First sighting of the Guggenheim, next to the Y and red piece of the bridge:
This church was the main one visited by the merchants that came into Bilbao to trade or to move their goods down the river to the sea.
Per usual, there were wonderful old buildings mixed into the new. We aimed straight for the market on the river for coffee and a few pintxos to hold us until we got to lunch. There hadn’t been any snacks on the way so we were ready.
Here’s the market, a beautiful building and the first market I’ve been to in an old city that was fully indoors (except a few tables outside) and clean!
It’s the red and white (colors of Bilbao) building on the left next to the bridge.
Bob, Susan and I walked along the river to our hotel, the Hotel Conde Duque. Good hotel, nice, clean, great staff, nice casual restaurant, sadly the room is on an air shaft. Luckily, I am planning on walking a lot because the city is just beautiful.
We got cleaned up, started sorting things and then met up (Carol and Matthew were at a different hotel because of later booking for the trip) at the Guggenheim Bilbao museum. Fabulous building by Frank Gehry. I’m going to try to go back tomorrow morning to get some photos without so many people.
Matthew told us to meet us at the big dog with the flowers in front of the museum. From our hotel, Bob, Susan, and I approached from the back, but every side of the museum is a visual gift so we just kept walking around and up the stairs then found the dog. Then we understood why he thought it was a good meeting place! “Puppy” by Jeff Koons. The flowers were incredible.
Matthew had made reservations for us for the museum and for lunch in the Bistro in the museum. Totally wonderful meal. I did remember to take a wee video. Hard to convey how interesting, fresh and good the food was. I’m not going to turn into a foodie, but I am definitely appreciating some of the meals we’ve been having.
This gazpacho seemed to have the oddest ingredients – sheep cheese at the bottom, Iberian ham, croutons. Every element was perfect!
In the museum, totally cool exhibits, not a surprise, but it’s like the Guggenheim in NYCity and has open air walk around spaces for each floor and pretty open stairs in between. Or a see-through elevator. I managed to do part of the second floor and then was back on the ground and staying put. But that was totally fine because I loved the exhibits on the first floor.
This was a small piece of one of the exhibits. I got to walk it more when I came back down to this floor. It was called “The Matter of Time” by Richard Serra. He designed it for this space and used metals for all the pieces. As I remember from the audio tour, it was meant to have the person observe themselves and their reactions in response to walking in the midst, around, through these different tilting spaces. They made me so dizzy! Little kids were running through no problem, but I generally had my hand on a wall when the angles were really pronounced and I was walking through them. Susan said she had the same reaction. The observer observing the observed. Very interesting.
Here’s the exhibit from the second floor.
Here’s another outside statue – that’s me underneath, it was huge!
After the museum, we went back to our rooms and chilled. Read, unpacked to set up for laundry, etc. Tomorrow is a free day! Sadly, Bob and Susan have to leave, but then up to us what we want to do.
Reb's Walks! 