Bilbao, Spain, Saturday November 22nd

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After leaving Toulouse at 1.45 a.m. it was very difficult to be comfortable enough for long stretches of sleep on the bus, and we were always woken from sleep each time the bus stopped. All except for the Bilboa stop, when we were woken from our dreams by a kind fellow passenger who had been with us since Toulouse. We scrambled up, grabbed our belongings and hopped out into the dark and rain outside the Bilbao Termibus.

We had excellent instructions from our couchsurfing host in Bilbao, Dany, so we walked across to the nearby metro and took the train to his station. A lift carried us about four storeys up the hillside to the level of the park on top of the hill and spat us out onto the footpath. There was only misty rain, but this lift was not inside a building and had little in the way of sheltering overhang. We rang Dany, who said that he would be there in ten minutes. It was still fairly dark when he arrived, but his work hours meant that meeting us now was better than later. He took us for a quick tour through the park to a view point, where down below we could see the city garlanded by the River Nierve. The enormous open green space of a park around us had one chimney standing to commemorate its past as a vast industrial site.Dany remembered the fences keeping people out when he was a child, when the industries had been closed down and the buildings were falling into decay. The Guggenheim Museum in the distance looked like a shell partly in the water, with a tall bridge guarding it. It was raining and our umbrellas had no intentions of providing shelter in the wind. We wound up the zigzag of urban hillside roads to Dany’s flat, in the last row in the built up area.We all went to bed, with the intention to rise at one pm, when Dany needed to leave and so we did too. He was working at the paper, and would not return until at least ten-thirty or eleven o’clock, so we had a day of exploring and being out ahead of us.

The little orientation tour Dany gave us in the early hours of the morning was a very good idea, since we now felt confident about the layout and had a good sense of where the major places were. Our plan for today was to have some lunch then to follow the river and make use of what was forecast to be one of the better days during our stay. Taking the steps down to the old town, the ones that the metro lift had allowed us to avoid, made us realise even more that there are many different levels of the city.The steps reached a large square surrounded by grand old buildings with narrow streets leading off it. We walked through, down to the river, and crossed over.

Dany had explained how the mountains surrounding Bilbao limited its growth, but there was no sense that open spaces or aesthetics had been neglected. Large squares all had flowers and statues, and the river was edged with generous walkways and sculptures. The city had reinvented itself from its industrial past, and had focused on becoming an efficient and very people-friendly place to be in. It was a city of shapes and contrasts and a great consciousness of design. Buildings from different eras sat side by side, and civic sculpture had continued to evolve up to today. Shops featured designer furniture.It was raining off and on, and Keith was cold. We were walking in a fairly exposed area along the river bank, so when we reached the Guggenheim, we were glad of the shelter from the wind as we walked around the building.The building is curved, and has oblong titanium scales on some of its surface and white sandstone on the rest. It curled under the bridge beside it. Many angles met in some areas and the notion of a building having a general shape is not valid here. It was very interesting to look at, and like a sculpture itself. I thought that they should not have allowed any signage on the building because it detracted from it.A beautiful sculpture outside of a spider enticed young people to play about its legs and pose for a photo.Another, near the entrance, was of an enormous puppy covered in pansies – very much a novelty and probably a nightmare to maintain.After collecting a map and some information, we set off to the shopping mall to find a supermarket. Once there, Keith thawed out so we decided to buy lunch and keep our food for tea. Christmas decorations were hanging everywhere and busy shoppers were bustling by with parcels. I noticed a lot of people of South American origin, and also people who looked ‘Spanish’, as well as a fairly cosmopolitan mix of others.

The rain had eased off a bit so we strolled through the park of Dona Casilda Iturrizar, where a wet tree’s roots looked sculptural to my eye which had been trained to look at shapes in this city of modern and classical art. Bilbao has so many fountains shooting forth water and this park was no exception. Two enormous towers of water raced to the sky and were swept across the paths by the wind as they fell into ponds where ducks did not care that it was cold. Decorative buildings like Greek temples looked beautiful with their stones wet and shiny and provided a refuge for someone sleeping in a corner, completely covered by an apricot blanket.Colonnades covered creepers joined the buildings around a central fountain, also one that shot to the skies but this time from many jets. The sky line is so interesting here, with elegant old buildings from the 18^th of 19^th century rubbing shoulders with more modern creations.

We were heading for the Maritime Museum which was open late and was free because today was its birthday, when we were forced to seek shelter. The rain was practically horizontal and impossible to manage our umbrellas in. We stepped into a glass box which was the entry to an underground car park, and shivered. Some people were braving it, and I was surprised to see one woman, inside a very large curved umbrella, taking the time to eat and enjoy a doughnut as the storm raged around her. We did hope for better weather on other days because this was certainly not much fun being out and about today.

The large red crane that had been left on the river banks to remind people of the busy nature of the port in Bilbao in industrial times was a bright splash of colour on this grey day.We were still cheerful as we passed more sculptures, and piles of dirt that could have been sculpture, viewed from above and placed as they were in a courtyard, and along a walkway that was a forest of angled shade sails.It was not so great as night fell, but by then we were close to the Museum and some warmth was coming up.

The Ria de Bilbao Maritime Museum had an outside section that we had to pass, given the dark and the rain. Inside it was very well set out and had interesting information and displays about the history and development of Bilbao as a port town with privileges for trading overseas in the Middle Ages. An interesting section explained how rescues were carried out in the past, and how very dangerous navigating the river into and out of the sea was. There was a very powerful painting that showed some exhausted men being rescued.The rescuers had been told not to go, since it would mean death for them all, not just the ones who had already spent several hours in icy waters and would no doubt already be dead. They went anyway, seeing how it would be if the positions were reversed and there was still the faintest hope. Meanwhile, the men in the water clung on for five hours, praying to the Virgin to help them. Against the odds, all bar a couple were brought to safety, and it was generally considered to be a miracle that anyone survived.

Bilboa has lived through the life of its river, with the township forming an important link with other regions and countries through trade, through related industries, through ship building and through the development of merchant banking and shipping companies. One of its heroes is Evaristo De Churrucu y Brunet who took over the role of Director for the Bilbao Board of Port Works in 1887. He was a tireless researcher who studied old patterns of the river before proposing new plans and convinced those in power to spend amazing amounts of money on improvements, including fixing river bends, taking out rocks, putting in mooring buoys, a long breakwater, a steel quay more than a kilometre metre long that also controlled water flow, dredging the river and installing electric navigation lighting. No wonder the people loved him, since by his actions he saved many lives. Some early photos showed that women were every bit as strong as men in the labouring and heavy jobs that they undertook, although it seems that it was predominantly men who went to sea. A fascinating collage of paintings and photos filled a whole wall. It would have been a marvellous museum for anyone with knowledge or interest in ship building and navigation, but the many models showing development were rather lost on us, especially since we were labouring uphill trying to read the Spanish. Everything was written in Basque as well, a language which is an enigma, since no-one has yet worked out its origins. It is not related to Latin languages, as Spanish and French are, and so we have no hope with it at all.

We were not far from the shopping mall, and we knew that it would be open late. It seems a little sad to say that we spent our time hanging out in the food court of a mall for several hours, but we were warm and could use the computer in peace. No-one expected us to finish our meal politely and leave.In fact, no-one was behaving as one would in a restaurant. An astounding amount of rubbish was created by every meal from Burger King and McDonalds, and when people finished their meals they just walked off and left it all over the table. Lots of rubbish had fallen to the floor and was simply walked over as new customers arrived. Most of the patrons were teenagers, although some were parents with children. A young goth woman was yawning as her boyfriend tried to entice her to be more amorous, while another young couple practically ate each other, oblivious of their surroundings. The noise level meant that everyone had to shout to be heard. It was not much of a Saturday night out, but clearly being with friends was what mattered and many people were having a good time. At last it was late enough for us to go back to Dany’s, since he would have finished work and be on his way or home already.

We took the metro and whizzed underground until we were raised up to the level of the park by the lift. We followed all the directions that we remembered from the morning, but we missed a turn and found ourselves a little further around the hill. It was easily fixed and luckily the rain was only light. We were warm as toast when we finally made it up the many stairs from road to road and finally to the flat.

We spent a couple of very interesting hours chatting with Dany about the Basque culture and his work in graphics. Then we checked our emails. It was quite late when we went to bed, with the intention to have a day at the museums tomorrow.