drive by Guggenheiming

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Here we are, on the other side of the Iberian Peninsula. It's very close to the sea, the river is tidal and so I might as well claim to be in the vicinity of the Bay Of Biscay. Westside...
Hang on, isn't there some Basque Seperatist terrorost group operating here? We'd better keep our bags close to hand, not because they'll get stolen, but because the police will send in the Bomb squad to defuse them!
Our train delivers us to the Bilbao railway station at 8am in the morning. Not that there was a sign anywhere indicating that this was the main station, or that we were even in Bilbao. I found this slightly unnerving phenomenon happening in a few places; you pull into a station and it's not at all obvious to the first time visitor as the platform sign you are reading is saying something quite different to what you thought it would say. This leads to moments of panic and confusion. Another thing that causes moments of confusion is the tendency for every country to spell the names of foreign cities their own way, and even to have wildly different pronunciation. I reckon that the locals are the only ones who have the right to mess around with their places' name! So, for example, what we english speakers are calling Venice: they dont call it that anywhere else. The Germans have their own name, the French have one, the Spanish have one, and I think even the Dutch have their own. The Italians right now are calling it "Venicia", they need to issue a press release to all the other countries, and it'll go something like this (translated)..."We, the inhabitants of Italia, have decreed that our fair and sinking town of Venicia is to be spelled as such. And now the phoenetic pronunciation...(insert phoenitic stuff here)". It would save an awful lot of confusion. I can remember trying to book a ticket to Venicia while in Germany, and having to spend 5 minutes attempting to explain myself. In the end I had to say something like the place with all the canals that isn't in the Netherlands and somewhere just above the knee of a thigh high boot.
Whoops, it appears I've veered slightly off topic!

The train wasn't going any further, so we had to get off. This being Spain, nothing was going to be open until 10am, so we went and sat by a water feature over the road from the station, where the morning sun was beginning to have a warming effect, and just watched people. It was like watching the sea: when a Metro arrived and disgorged its contents you'd get a set, and the lights of the pedestrian crossing split them into individual waves.
Hmm, and another thing I couldn't help noticing. Either they eat less or they do more excersise. I would guess we watched at least two or three thousand working adults walk by, and but for maybe 10 standout individuals, they were all slim. Perhaps it's the lack of corn starch, processed fats, sugars and salt in their diet due to the American fast food franchises struggling to establish themselves.

Poor old Bilbao, I'm returning to you right now! It's a very smart city, plenty of old stuff done up nicely and laid out in a radial pattern, not a grid, which is sometimes a bit tricky if the majority of your formative years has been spent dealing with angles of 90 degrees, or maybe 45 if you absoloutely must.
But there is one thing which really makes this place worth a visit, the Guggie, as we seasoned travelers are wont to call it. A huge titanium work of art/art gallery. It's impressive, probably more imressive than the collection of art inside it even.
I wonder what would happen if such a structure was proposed in New Zealand.
The opportunity arises to erect an internationally significant gateway to the City of Auckland, a fitting tribute to the polynesian capital of the world. There is a bit of a buzz, then John Banks and the New Zealand Herald get hold of it. "Waste of taxpayers money, we need to concentrate on building more roads, those used imports belong on the waterfront, it should be square-far more space that way, and actually, we can just refurbish what we've got already, put some more seats in". Distilled from weeks of sensationalist headlines.

Anyway, we did make it to the Guggenheim and it was excellent. Unfortunately, after seeing the first floor and a half, we started to succumb to "art out". But we absoloutely had to see it all, so we picked up the pace, which by this time had slowed to the mountain-climber-going-up-last-100-metres-of-Everest dawdle, and raced through the last parts, making sure to at least glance at everything once, a drive by arting, if you will.

Our next task was to find a suitable place to stay the night, so after a quick hoon on the internet in the library, which is in the very beautiful "old town", we set off to locate a couple of hostels which appeared quite close. There was one in the same part of town, but being cautious we decided to shop around and walked maybe half an hour, sweating quite freely as it was now 26 degrees, to one which was in the middle of a pretty seedy looking place. Alarm bells were poised to ring, and when we talked to the unhelpful guys at reception, they went off. So we walked straight back to where we had just come from and got a room there. Lindo and I, we're just really into walking a lot with our luggage in tow. It makes us feel better when we finally sit down/collapse. When we had checked in at about 3pm or so, this lovely little old town area was quiet with not so much going on. However we were about to get whumped by the Siesta effect again, because when we came back down the stairs to go and check out the afternoon sun, the narrow little streets were packed with people, the bars were all open and there were tapas everywhere.
Quite a transformation, but this time we were sans bags and able to enoy the atmosphere.

So the next day we intended to get up to somewhere like Bordeaux. The only problem was that we couldn't. Oops, the boys had made a slight error of judgement and got themselves into a town where the train comes into but doesn't go out the other side of. In order to get back to where our Eurail tickets could be used we had to catch a bus to the capital of the Basque country, a little seaside town in the south of France called Beyonne, where bayonettes get there name from, oddly enough.
Tickets are duly purchased, we find out where our bus will leave from and go and stand over there. Time passes, it's 1pm, our departure time, and our bus still hasn't shown up. Lindo is taking some quick snaps of the bus depot and I'm just feling slightly nervous. I look at a bus just pulling out of a bay only a couple up from where we are, and it seems to have our destination on it. I take another look at my ticket, and I realise we have made a wee error. We have confused seat numbers with bus loading bays and we've just missed our ride. But no! My sense of despair turns to an adrenalin fuelled frenzy and I yell at Lindo "watch the bags man, I'm going to try and stop the bus!" which I then do by running after it, fortunately it's in a slow moving queue of about 3, and I can get the drivers attention. He opens the door, I wave my ticket under his nose and gesticulate wildy, he says "Si". But now I've got to go and get Lindo and our bags, so I tell him I'll be back, and can he wait, which he obviously doesn't understand because the moment I step off the bus he starts moving again. I hurtle back over to where Lindo is, grab a couple of bags and shout "follow me", which he does. By now the bus is on the street, movng away from us and I dont know if this is going to work after all. However, I get another surge of adrenalin when I see it's stopped at the lights. I somehow get the drivers attention again, probably by waving, or jumping up and down, and he angrily waves me round the back. Lindo thought his gesture was slightly more dismissive, but no, the automatic luggage compartments open, we hurl our bags in and run to the front to get in. Bus driver is not happy, but all the other passengers have seen the drama unfold and they're laughing, so I apologise to everyone and we take our seats.
Phew! That was a little too close, but we made it

Driving a huge bus through the narrow streets of seaside towns is a job for a highly skilled driver. It takes us a long time to get to Bayonne! The French Basque towns must be teeming with people in the summer, and they're all so picturebook perfect.
We only have a small oppoptunity to walk about here though, as the next day is the beginning of the school holidays, and all trains north to Bordeaux and Paris are completely booked out. The only train left that will get us to Paris before Saturday afternoon leaves at 11pm tonight, Thursday. Oh oh, another sleeper decision needs to be made, but we wisely take the seated option, shoebox be damned!
Now I'm really glad we didn't miss that bus, and we get to see a little more of Paris.

Au revoir!

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Photos

woo, at the guggenheim
reflection in big plastic blow up flowers. no one's ever taken this shot before aye...

in the minimilism
this photo is illegal!

guggie in the background
and camera sitting on a the edge of a bridge 50 metres above the water..