April 21 - Spain is a country that inspires the imagination and stirs the soul. (Picasso)

How true that statement is!  Today we arrived in Getxo, the port for Bilbao.  Bilbao is the largest city in the autonomous region of the Basque community of Spain.  Including its metro area it has a population of more than 1 million people making it the largest city in all northern Spain.  The city lies on the Nervión River and which is not navigable because it’s subject to large tidal swings; hence we docked in Getxo, which at one time was an upperclass residential community for merchants and businessman who worked in nearby Bilbao.  At one time the larger city was the center of the wood, wool, and iron trade in Spain.

This region of Spain includes the Basque people and I think they deserve some commentary.  The Basque language is the only language unrelated to any European languages.  From everything I’ve read, no one really knows what the origin of the language is, but there have been some linguists who speculate that it  is the closest to what would have been Cro-Magnon speech.  The Basque people occupy several provinces in Spain and a couple in France.  Until not so very long ago there was a pretty strong separatist movement, especially in Spain, but after being given more autonomy that seems to have calmed down.

Today I had a free tour provided by a representative of a travel agent consortium of which my agent is a part.  It was free so I figured, why not?  We took a half hour bus ride into Bilbao and arrived at the Guggenheim Museum. The museum was funded by the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation which has built several other such facilities around the world.  It opened in 1997 and houses  contemporary Spanish works of art.  The building itself is a metal structure designed by the architect Frank Gehry and which Gehry himself described as a “randomness of curves” designed to capture the light and to provide views of the surrounding hills of the Basque country.  The atrium has been described as an opening flower as it rises from the ground level to the upper stories.   That all sounds pretty grand doesn’t it?  If I’m perfectly honest, the building itself I find pretty interesting, but the art it contains just isn’t my cup of tea.  I guess I just don’t understand some of it and I would much rather see some impressionist or even Picasso or Dali work. 

It is a unique building!

These next few are some of the art I saw.  They didn;t do much for me.

I did love this indoor puppy though!

There are some very interesting sculptures outside the museum worth mentioning.  One is a massive puppy created by Jeff Koons. It is a 43-foot-tall topiary covered by thousands of flowers with an internal irrigation system to keep them alive.  It was originally brought here on loan when the museum opened, but it became so beloved by the locals that when it was slated to be moved there were huge protests so a decision was made to leave it here.  The other is a gigantic metal sculpture of a spider named Maman created by an artist named Louise Bourgeois.  She has made several of these located at museums around the world.  The spider is about 33 feet tall and the same width.

The topiary puppy

I only got a photo of Maman through a museum window but you can see how big she is.

After our very brief visit to the museum we headed into the old part of the city which is for pedestrians only and had pinxos (the Basque word for tapas) and some wine in a small local restaurant.  There were three kinds of crusty bread topped with a local crab and cheese mixture,  a squid ink and spinach mixture and a potato and truffle one.  They were all tasty and pretty filling.  After our pause for food it was already time to head back to the ship.  It doesn’t sound like we did very much but somehow I managed to get in more than 8,000 steps and I was pooped when I got back.

This pinxo was crab and cheese - very tasty!

A couple of photos of downtown Bilbao

An interesting thing I forgot to mention.  In days gone by some boats would evidently come up the Nervión River if the tide was right but as the tide went out they could become trapped on a sand bar.  To free them women would tie ropes around their waitsts and pull them free.  Along the river we saw this statue commemorating those women.

Not the white cliffs of Dover, instead the white cliffs of Getxo as we sailed away

In the evening I met two friends in the Observation Bar for a pre-dinner cocktail and then we dined at the Colonnade restaurant for barbecue ribs night.  We sat outside and it was quite lovely.  The ribs aren’t as good as some we can get at home, but the ambiance makes up for that.  Of course I went to the show and the Club afterward and even did a little dancing.  Then it was time to call it a night.  We’re leaving Spain tonight, so Adiós España until la proxima vez.