Bilbao Day 2 (10.17.07)

We had a whirlwind day in Bilbao with a very good tour guide who happened to be a PhD student in contemporary art history at the local university. (It became obvious during our tour of the Guggenheim that she had an extensive knowledge and understanding of art and its context). We started the day with a driving tour of the city, crisscrossing the Bilbao river on at least 5 of its 12 bridges. I had already seen a fair amount of what we drove by in the bus during either my quest to find internet yesterday morning, or my fantastic 35-minute jog through the streets and along the river yesterday night. (To my running friends-I am up to 35 minutes!! Woo HOO!).

*

Bilbao is actually a pretty amazing place and I would have been happy to stay there another day to explore. One of the major cities in the Basque region of Spain, it started as an industrial city with steel, coal, and shipping. There has been a fair amount of wealth in the region and the regional planners seem to have invested it well with a fantastic infrastructure of public transportation, parks, museums, and open areas. In the latter part of the 20th century, the city planners realized that they needed to transition their economy away from the industrial sector and into the service industry and tourism. They successfully competed to become another European site for a Guggenheim museum and then built an equally impressive National Theater and award winning underground subway system. The Guggenheim has not only changed the skyline of the city with its undulating walls of titanium, but also influenced the art and architecture of the city. It is a really interesting combination of classic buildings from the 17th-19th centuries with very ornate facades and a new minimalist modern sensibility when it comes to decor and street scapes. There is an old part of the city that is reminiscent of the tiny cobbled streets of Toledo but with filled with shop after shop of trendy modern clothiers. We hopped off the bus for a while and wandered through the streets and several churches. The churches and cathedrals were interesting, but I have to admit that I am about done with churches. I honestly don't appreciate the difference between Gothic style and neo-classical style architecture, and I definitely don't feel any sense of majesty or spirituality upon entering these enormous stone behemoths with gilded paintings of the Virgin Mary or the Crucifixion hanging on the walls.

*

We ended the "morning" portion of the tour in the Guggenheim museum and I wish we had more than an hour and a half to wander through. The permanent exhibits are big, minimalist, and emotion-provoking, and there was a new temporary exhibit entitled "300 years of American Art." They had some amazingly significant pieces of art displayed in 5 separate galleries and I stuck next to our guide to hear her talk about both the technical aspects of the work, as well as its cultural context.

*

The whole morning I had been FREEZING! I packed for 85-degree Morocco rather than 55-degree Spain, and I was bound and determined to go shopping during our afternoon break, though by the time we finished at the Guggenheim it had dwindled to less than 2 hours. Mom and I made a dash for the Gran Via and ended up in a department store (El Corte Ingles) where I found a stylish belted coat and a pair of Euro-loafers, and Mom got a shirt. I will need a few more things before I get to Athens in November, but we ran out of time and I didn't even get to change into my new clothes because we had to join the tour for the afternoon segment.

*

In the evening we crossed the river to the South and went to a park overlooking the city for photos, we then visited another church and drove to north to the coast to see the Atlantic Ocean and the ports. On the way, we stopped at the ---------- ------, a very unique bridge....

*

Knowing that fancy group dinner would be a prolonged ordeal, I hopped off the bus at the last minute when it paused outside our hotel and ended up having a really fun dinner with my mom's friends, Cary Baker and Eloise New. I learned later that the rest of the group had an overpriced and fairly frustrating dining experience at a fancy restaurant around the corner, and didn't get back to the hotel until after 11 pm. I of course was on internet when they arrived back to the hotel, and despite 6 am wake-up call for tomorrow, probably didn't go to bed until close to one.