Bilboa

---

I now know what a pig feels like when being roasted. I should have known that San Sebastian, being right on the coast, gets comparatively mild weather. Bilboa on the other hand is in the interior, and boy do you feel it. I got there at about 3pm (I won't get started about how it's impossible for me to get up early in San Sebastian for some reason), and I was literally greeted with a blast of hot air. My small keychain thermometre and nearby public digital temperature readouts both showed about 45 degrees Celcius.

Having been told by both my guidebook and numerous other sources I've run into that Bilboa is much more than the Guggenheim, I set off to explore the old town first. The place really was pretty, reminding me a lot of small Italian towns, but with a positive difference: whereas most "quaint" old towns you run into elsewhere all have international chains infecting all the ground floors, Bilboa's old town seems immune. There were a lot of what looked like mom and pop shops, quite a few making baby clothes for some reason. My tour of the old town wasn't very long at all, but I got mild heat-stroke for my trouble. The symptoms only set in when I got to the Guggenheim later, prompting an impromptu break and snack in the museum's cafeteria. Fortunately, I had realized much earlier that my endurance in those temperatures was pathetic, and abandoned the rest of the tourist office's suggested itinerary (which involved visiting several gardens). I opted instead to hop on Bilboa's surprisingly modern, extensive and well-run metro/light rail system, slathering on more sunscreen enroute.

I'm not sure about the rest of Bilboa, but the Guggenheim definitely made the visit worth it, 45 degree heat and all. The geekish side of me usually tends to want to just dissect any buildings I see and figure them out. Usually, that's not much of a problem. With Frank Gehry's creation, I gave up inside a minute, and just enjoyed the pool of curves. Said enjoyment included photography, of course, and it's a good thing I was using a digital camera; film's expensive around here.

I must have spent close to an hour outside (ignoring the heat) and just admiring the building from all angles. I roomed with an architect masters student for a bit during the past academic term, and he had just gone on and on about this building, including the computer technology and innovations used to design the building. Seeing it in person, I now get what all the raving is about.

The inside was just as spectacular. Aside from the floor, there isn't a single planar surface, at all. The main exhibit happened to be about the Azteks, which was nice since I've never seen anything like that up close. I took more note of the gallery design however. It seems that Gehry experienced the same annoyance everyone else does with most of Europe's other museums: one long maze of rooms that confuses everyone in short order. In contrast, all the Guggenheim Bilboa's galleries are loop-shaped: you return to the main atrium after each exhibit, and can choose where to go next, as well as admire the view from the narrow gangways on the upper floors. That actually brings me to a bit of a peeve with the museum. No photography is allowed inside, period. The exhibits, I definitely understand, but why prohibit photography of the amazing interior architecture? That didn't stop me, or anyone else from finding secluded corners and discretely snapping away of course. In the interest of avoiding trouble however, I won't post any of the interior photos.

I chose not to doddle after finishing with the museum, and took the 9pm bus back to San Sebastian, getting there a little past 10pm. Dinner was tapas again, obviously, and I spent the rest of the night organizing and doing laundry. That took a while because I hadn't touched until then the mess I wore back from Pamplona, and they took a lot of hand scrubbing.

---

Photos

Bilboa
The old town is quite picturesque. A lot of the residents have a multitude of colourful flowers blooming on their balconies.

Bilboa from 40 Metres Up
Bilboa seems somewhere between a town and a metropolis. It has all the amenties of a large city (including a great rapit transit system), but is a lot cleaner.

Puppy
I thought I was hallucinating from the heat when I saw "Puppy", the 12-metre tall mascot of Bilboa and the Guggenheim.

Main Entrance, or Not
What I always thought was the main entrance of the Guggenheim Bilboa looks quite deceiving; at least enough to have fooled me. There's actually a pond between the walkway and the patio beneath the glass "entrance". You can't get in this way.

Talk About Striking Design
I'll take one of those offices...

The Postcard Shot
It's actually one heck of a hike across a bridge to get this photo from the opposite bank of the river.

Been There, Done That...
Couldn't resist the clichéd snapshot.