Spain Day 7

This was the day we had been waiting for since planning our trip. Our day in Bilbao, visiting the Guggenheim museum!

We awoke to stormy skies and unfortunately, it rained pretty heavily all day. We took a city bus to the bus depot and bought tickets for Bilbao. It was about 1 hour and a quarter drive through some towns and some countryside. With the rain, it was hard to see too far in the distance.

When we arrived in the town, we realized we didn't have a map of the area so we found an info booth and got one. Then we decided to experience the town by walking to the Guggenheim. After getting ourselves oriented, we made our way. It was about a half hour walk. We stumpled upon a Music Congress centre that was pretty cool for architecture.

Rounding a corner, we caught a glimpse of the Guggenheim. It was pretty unreal. It kind of blended into the grey sky so wasn't as impactful as it probably would be on a sunny day. But still, it is the most unique building I have ever seen.

We had decided earlier that we would spend part of our day on one of those city tour buses, where you can hop on and off at different stops, as it was raining and would be a good way to get to know the city. When consulting our pamphlet, we realized that they only made the run twice a day in November (not a very popular month to be there, I guess) so we ran to the booth. After waiting 10 min for the bus driver to show up and realizing that we were going to be the only ones on the bus (a very run down bus), we decided to get our money back and not go after all.

So, then we walked over to the Guggenheim (just down the street) and paid for admission. We got audioguides(included in the price), put our coats and backpacks in coat check and started our tour. Oh wait, before we started we headed straight for the cafeteria! I was starving. Reuben wasn't, of course. Since we hadn't spent the money on the bus tour, I decided we could splurge a little on lunch. I got this wonderful pasta salad, a chocolate bar and apple juice and Reuben got this huge baguette with cheese, jamon, lettuce and mayo and of course, a beer!:) It was great to have energizing food instead of just some pastry and a coffee. Anyway, so after that, we started our tour of the museum in the main lobby and we listened to our audioguide talk about the process of designing and building the museum. Look it up sometime, it's really cool!

Then we went up to the top floor to look through the History of Art exhibit. It took awhile because at every painting that had an audioguide number we stopped and listened. Then we went to the second floor to look at the temporary exhibit by Cy Twombly. Hmmm .... interesting but very modern. I couldn't stand it. Just some scripples on a page and that was art and then they have these long, significant meanings. Maybe I'm uncouth but it was a load of crock. Then we went to this huge installation of metal structures that you could walk through. It's hard to describe. Check it out here.

By this time, my feet were incredibly sore (the floor was concrete) so we headed back to the bus depot. We took the very modern subway. And then had to wait half an hour for the next bus back to San Sebastian. It was 6:30pm. While waiting, I was hungry, again!:), and I watched this wierd looking lady (she was wearing red capri sweats with knee-high winter boots) get something from the vending machine (looked like a bag of chips) and then proceed to throw them away, unopened. So, since I was in a foreign country and not knowing anyone around, I grabbed them from the garbage. It was a full, open garbage can and it was just sitting on top. It was a very good snack!

Back in San Sebastian, we headed to the grocery store again for another baguette and some cheese and a snack for the next day and then went to a coffee shop and had some specialty coffees (mine had bailey's in it) before bed.