Bilbao Day 1 (10.16.07)

Since my blogging seems to be getting out of hand (I spent 5 hours today at various internet portals catching up), I will attempt to keep this entry short of sweet. However, anyone who has read my employee self-evaluation knows that this is an impossibility, so we'll see how I do:

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Very early in the morning I caught a shottle to the airport and boarded a plane to Bilbao where I met up with a tour group that my parents are to be with for the next 10 days. The main trip is a small-ship cruise from Barcelona to Lisbon but my parents signed up for a "pre-trip" with a group of acquaintances that started in Bilbao. No sooner than arriving at the VERY chic hotel (Grand Hotel Dominic Bilbao?) and dropped my baggage in the triple that I will be sharing with my parents, I turned around and wandered back out the door in seach of internet. Most of the day was spent on internet, either at a cyber cafe that I found in the Old Town or at the hotel. While the rest of the group ate an overpriced dinner at the hotel's cafe, I had a wonderful wonderful run around town and along the river (it must have been good, since those two words are rarely combined in my limited language).

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I am sure I will have more information on Bilbao tomorrow after the tour starts, but the basics are that we are staying in a very nice, very sleek modern minimalist style hotel within spitting distance of Bilbao's masterpiece, the Bilbau Guggenheim Museum. While many of the city's facades are old, traditional, and ornate, featuring elaborate grill work and carved marble, the
interiors all seem to share a post-modern cleanliness from what I can see through the windows.

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The streets are old but there are brand-new electric trolleys criss-crossing the city noiselessy on sparkling tracks. The Rio Bilbao runs right behind the Guggenheim. It is lined on one side by traditional 17th and 18th century ornamented churches and governmental buildings, with wide paths at river's edge, bike lanes street side, and the opposing banks are connected by several ultramodern and very cool bridges that electrify the skyline. So far I really like Bilbao, despite the fact that it is a Basque city that experienced a bomb attack by separatist activists last week. I like the parks, I like its youthful feeling, I like the cleanliness and the public pay toilets on the street corners, and at least for today, I am liking myself in Bilbao