Blogs from Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain, Europe - page 7

We must surely be in a very relaxed mode because we didn’t wake up until 8am this morning.That is after 10 hours sleep!!!Or perhaps the 3 days on the road from Barcelona had taken the wind out of our sails and last night was catch up time. We headed for Bilbao in the late morning with the plan to take in the Guggenheim and the old city and anything else that we see in between. The drive into Bilbao is along a narrow valley similar to the one that we travelled on to reach Areatza yesterday. People here are housed in apartments and the buildings are located all over the place anywhere there is enough flat space to put one up.They are rather ugly in design and painted in dour colours but we suppose at the ... read more

A somewhat longer driving day. Leaving Santiago de Compostela, we initially headed inland for some time, then turned northward toward the coast again, hitting the coastline at Ribadeo. From there to Bilbao, it was mostly driving along an interstate-type highway, albeit not yet complete, to Bilbao. Along the way we stopped frequently to see views of the rugged coastline of Galicia, Asturia, and Cantabria, before entering Basque Country. A brief note on languages in Spain. There are a number. Galician is closer to Portuguese thanto Spanish, and in fact is considered by many to be a Portuguese dialect. Both are derived from Latin. The Basques speak a language that is the only language of Spain not derived from Latin, and in fact is not an Indo-European language at all. It is totally distinct and is thought ... read more

It took an hour to drive down the coast to Mundaka. Checked in to our hotel, which was four kilometres out of Mundaka towards Gernika. Drove into down town Mundaka and found it extremely busy being a hot summers Sunday. The streets are very narrow and the countryside green and lush. We had some tapas at the local hotel and watched the teenagers dive off the rock platforms into the small port. We decided to go for a swim around at the local beach. Indi and Jarah had a great time jumping off the rocks. No surf, as we had missed it by 3 hours. Drove to Bermeo to check out the port and the fishing village. The next morning, we checked out the local surf shop and headed to Bilbao and the Guggenheim Museum. ... read more

Wednesday 29th July - Bilbao, The Picos, Santander The Guggenheim is an amazing building but I had to agree with the consensus that debated whether its content was worthy of its surroundings. That's partly because I don't really get gargantuan ultra modern sculptures, those more refined would probably disagree. As a basic sort of chap. for me art is about pictures on canvas, or other media and for that I generally do prefer modern art. So the top floor of the Guggenheim held most interest but even that was dwarfed by the architectural genius of the building itself. As amazing as the Guggenheim as a statement on the landscape was, it paled in comparison to the Picos de Europa. En route as I passed Santander on the bike battling a gale, I questioned the sanity of ... read more

Tuesday 28th July - San Sebastian - Bilbao After mucho milos (I'm picking up this Spanish lark already) the last couple of days, I had always planned today to be an easy, lazy day, but that was no excuse for taking the autoroute the 100km or so short hop to Bilbao. I studied the map afterwards (yes I know somewhat arse about face) and noticed the coastal road. Sure enough it even warranted a mention in Lonely planet. Wally. Still I have to say that it was by far the most scenic and interesting autoroute I have ever been on. The road flirted with the coast and then carved its way through lush valleys and hills, twisting and turning like the mountain pass it dreamed of being and with motorway quality tarmac and loads of space ... read more