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Published: October 8th 2006
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so to continue...
we made our way to el pais vasco, an autonomous community in northeast on the border with france. the basque people have their own separate history, culture, and even language that can't be related to any other language spoken on the planet. many basques want complete autonomy from spain (as an autonomous community they have many rights, but are still part of spain), the most extreme case of which can be seen in the terrorist group ETA. bilbao, our first stop, is essentially the industrial center of el pais vasco, but over the past 10-20 years it has seen incredible growth as a city of culture and other things.
so yea, we arrived in bilbao around american dinner time and hopped on their metro system to get to the center of the city. once there some of us went to the tourist information place to get a list of hotels and pensions in the area since we decided we were actually going to stay somewhere legit that night. meandering through the narrow streets we eventually found some random pension and went up to inquire about price and whatnot. they had a double room and a triple
room and it would end up being about 17 euro per person- sounds good to me. while the girls showered, nick and i went out in search of negrita (our favorite dark rum) and then got ready, ourselves.
we were starving, but really wanted to keep our budget under control, so casey approached this little old lady on the street and asked her where we might be able to find a grocery store. she was really cute and directed us to this place across on of the rivers that she said had all the essentials, namely ham and bread. off we went, and for about 6 euros came out with two loaves of bread, freshly slized chorizo, and cheese for all 5 of us. returning to our pension we began what would become a tradition of a picnic feast on the floor of our place. delicious. casey and i also decided to have a showtunes jam session, surely disturbing all of our neighbors. we spent the night pretty much roaming the streets, as not much was open and again, it just wasn't Madrid. we eventually made it back to that little place to buy ice cream and dark chocolate
which was quickly devoured. it was a disgusting feeling to wake up the next morning only to find the lid of an ice cream cup in my pocket.
the next day was time for the Guggenheim, the art museum for which Bilbao is famous. we walked there and consequently got to see much of the city in daylight, walking along the big river with these big nasty fish in it. the city is surprisingly pretty and old-looking, which then sharply contrasts the uber-modern Guggenheim museum. we wanted some good breakfast-lunch but seeing as we couldn´t find anywhere cheap or good-looking, we settled for Subway. it was kind of cool seeing everything in spanish inside, and not gonna lie, it was pretty delicious as well.
as it was a change of seasons, two out of the three floors of the Guggenheim were closed in preparation for new exhibits, but we did get to see the entire first floor which was really cool. They had guidebooks in all four official languages of spain, so naturally i got all four. i had an interesting fleeting conversation with this old woman who was infuriated at the fact that it said 'Español´instead of
´Castellano´for the language we americans consider spanish, in that you can´t name a language after a country if there are 3 other co-official languages being spoken. anyway, the exhibits were really cool, especially these giant metal maze things that you could walk through. at night there´s this really cool fire-fountain outside of the museum in the shallow pool, but we unfortunately didnt´get to see it.
after having our fill of the museum we headed to this crazy-looking park right next to it. it essentially matched the crazy guggenheim design. we had WAY too much fun there than what would have been considered normal. it was also really warm and humid for some reason. once that was done we basically headed over to the metro (the tracks of which weirdly run on astro-turf-looking grass) and went to the bus station to buy tickets for san sebastian...
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Dad~
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'Español´vs.´Castellano´
This is a part of Spain I don't know much about with the exception of Basque terrorists movement. I didn't know there were two other co-official languages in Spain. What are the third & fourth languages? The Guggenheim Museum's architecture is beautiful - typical Gehry. In the one shot of the museum from down the street, the roof is reminiscent of the Pritzker Oudoor Music Pavilion in Millenium Park in Chicago. Anyway, glad to see pictures returning to your travel blog. Travel safe.