So the Guggenheim Museum is the reason we came to Bilbao. It is an impressive building to say the least. Mark tells me it was an initiative between the Guggenheim Foundation and the city of Bilbao in 1997, to build there and revive a dying portside town. It is also the town where the ferries that sail to the UK leave from. In that regard, the building itself is shaped like a cruise ship, a cruise ship with three decks. It is clad in squares of reflective titanium It’s very modern and makes for a great piece of architecture. We joined the queue to enter (€13.00, can you tell it’s a private museum?) and only had to wait around half an hour to get in. The building is just as fabulous on the inside, with vast open spaces, lots of steel and glass, and views out onto the river. There is a soaring atrium in the centre, and all of the exhibition spaces arranged themselves around this, so it is used as the base focal point to find what you want to look at. There was surprisingly not all that much in the museum itself. A few exhibitions that had maybe a dozen pieces in them each, so we wandered for about an hour and a half and saw pretty much everything.
The first thing we came to was by Richard Serra. It was a series of steel (uhm) things. A few metres tall and a variety of shapes and widths, all designed for people to walk through. The one we walked into was a large spiral one, and we thought there’d be something in the middle, but there wasn’t. So we joined the crowd at the end who were all standing there looking dumbfounded, many of us giggling a little, most of us (probably) thinking, “This is art”? The next exhibition was very cool though – it was a huge white room, nothing on the walls except for built in speakers blasting out a crowd cheering and chanting at a football match. On one wall, was a screen about the size of a smart phone – it had a video image of the match, except it had been altered to show just one player. So here was this one guy, running back and forth, obviously trying to defend, and then get in on the action, but it looked so bizarre because he was the only one on the field. All the while, this huge crowd was cheering. We laughed at that one.
There were a few other exhibits, some a little disturbing, most focused on bodily functions and gross murder scenes. So it was an interesting visit to say the least. Outside the museum was an enormous cat sculpture, maybe 12 metres high, which was covered in growing flowers of all different colours. It was a nice entrance display and it has left me wondering how they keep all the flowers fresh and blooming.
So we are on the road again now (passports in hand) on the way to a couple of nights in Zaragoza. I must say, the mountains just outside Bilbao are gorgeous. They rise out of nowhere and are totally covered in fir trees. It looks like they have a timber industry thing happening and are replanting as they go as there are trees in big patches of the same size, with a distinct line between trees that are all the same size as well, only taller. The weather is also a bit more bearable up here in the north, only 34 degrees today, so it’s pretty bloody good in my books! And how magical is this, driving along a Spanish highway, looking at the mountains, singing along to Roger Glover’s “Butterfly Ball”. Love is all.
LATER:
We arrived in Zaragoza and spent the next 40 minutes trying to get to our hotel. Sat navs don’t understand road works – and these were major road works. Turns out they discovered this old Roman wall, and they are excavating it (as you would). As our hotel is on Avenida Cesar Augustus, so named because of the other Roman wall they found, the road in front, and beside our hotel is closed off and in the midst of an archeological dig. We eventually found the hotel, and booked in, and parked in the wrong place, and then had the guy from the hotel come and show us where to park. We still don’t really know the dimensions of the car (within one eighth of an inch, the way you need to know the width of your car when driving in Europe) and so he made allowances for us and let us park in a bigger car park which is at least four inches wider than the car (I feel so spoilt)!
The hotel is … well, not quite what we are used to, but it’s all part of the experience, right? I just keep telling myself this. The man on reception tells me there is a coin operated machine on the first floor, we can get chocolates, coca-cola and sex for only €1.00. Yes, you read it right. We looked, but we couldn’t find the machine – someone may have decided they wanted to take it home with them.
Zaragoza itself seems like a fun place though. We went to get some dinner around 9:30pm (we are learning about late nights) and found a fantastic tapas buffet recommended in our travel book. We have eaten all sorts of things tonight, including more than excellent mussels done in a variety of ways, and topped it all off with two jugs of sangria – so excuse me if my typing is a little messy.
The walk to dinner was very cool – we walked through the main square which passed the basilica, and it’s a pretty incredible building to say the least. Lots of turrets and domes and its all lit up at night. There were also some good fountains, and on the way back, we joined the locals and had a little splash about in one – much needed as it’s still in the low 30’s even though it’s now midnight. Hmmm, time for sleep I think!
(All the Zaragoza photos are coming)
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