Down by the River in Basque Country

The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao,Spain

My most vivid memory of Bilbao, Spain is of a Basque driver screaming at me.  I’m sure they were obscenities with no doubt some reference to my mother.  But my lack of knowledge of the native language left me unscathed,  although perhaps deserving of the outrage. I DID cut him off at an intersection, but I didn’t hit anybody. In my own defense I find it difficult to understand street signs and directions in Basque cities such as Bilbao. 

Soon we were on a street by the river, and in front of us was the reason for our being here.  The Guggenheim Museum  was in full view.  Canadian architect Frank Gehry’s masterpiece emerges from the bank of the Nervion River, the titanium finish glistening in the afternoon sun like the sails of a silver sailing ship.  We crossed the river on the Princes of Spain Bridge and almost immediately found ourselves in the huge underground parking garage beside the museum. We took the elevator from the spacious parking garage to street level to walk a few hundred feet to the museum.  

The Puppy

Near the entrance is the “Puppy”: a 39 foot sculpture of a dog covered with 70,000 blooming flowers! Created by American Jeff Koons, the fifteen ton creation has been in San Francisco, Paris, Sydney, and Arolsen, Germany, before finding a permanent home in Bilbao.

One of the first things you notice upon entering the lobby of the museum is that everything is curved; there are few flat surfaces except for the floor. There are nineteen galleries and a permanent collection of modern and contemporary art from the mid-twentieth century to the present. I was surprised to see a small (one meter square) painting by American artist Jackson Pollack,  I did not realize he ever painted canvas that small in his “drip” style. 

We had seen New York’s Guggenheim collection in a museum designed by another famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. Gehry’s museum is much like being in a multilevel maze of titanium, limestone, and glass. It’s quite exciting and encourages discovery. No photography was allowed inside the museum, and I followed this rule, I must say due to the encouragement of my travel mate. There are large terraces from which to view the river and river walk nearby.  Here I saw a most unusual thing. There was a wheelchair with half a male manikin (from the waist down, fully clothed) in it. “Pushing” the chair was the upper part of the manikin.  It was eerie and created quite a stir.  We looked for the person controlling it via radio but could not find him in the crowd. 

Back inside the museum we ate a sandwich at one of the museum’s cafes.  The food was good but over-priced. On our walk back to the garage we could not restrain ourselves from taking a look over our shoulders at the “flowering pooch of Bilbao”. I also realized that I had been in a museum in which the structure was more exciting than the art it housed.

Cathedral de Santiago

 After touring some of the city streets and numerous traffic circles we found the Hotel Arriaga overlooking the river Nervion.  It was almost directly across the street from the opera house and down the street from a cathedral, the Church of San Anton.  I double parked while Claudette went in and found where hotel parking was.  It was underground as usual, and I started down the ramp after the garage type door went up and I saw a slim dark-haired woman motioning to me to follow her. I squeezed the Opal into a spot near the wall after letting Claudette exit the car first. (Otherwise, she would not have been able to get out of the car.) The lady, whom Claudette explained was the innkeeper, indicated that we were to follow her. We barely managed to get ourselves and luggage into the lilliputian elevator while the innkeeper explained in accented staccato English that she must operate the elevator.  We were not allowed at the controls. The room was like something out of the 1930’s, but comfortable. We stowed our gear and hit the streets to check out Bilbao’s old city.

Walking down the street  outside the hotel we could see a cathedral bathed in the late afternoon sun.  The yellow limestone had a golden glow.  We entered the first street to the right and found ourselves in the fourteenth century old city. The old buildings now have modern shops of high fashion and expensive jewelry. Foot traffic is fairly sparse but will increase as the clock approaches the nine o’clock hour. We window shopped a bit before finding an old restaurant for a bite to eat.  

The Bilbao Athletic Club had some of the older residents  dining.  There was a counter down one side with a display case full of enticing tapas.  The walls were decorated with soccer jerseys, posters, faded photographs of soccer teams of the years gone by, and a glass case full of autographed soccer balls and trophies. The counterman was quite chatty with fairly good English, and an old fellow suggested we buy a certain tapas. “Bueno, bueno!”, he said as he pointed at certain dishes. Then we bought a selection of tapas but noticed that he bought something different.   We took our food to one of the about ten tables. It is cheaper to buy your food at the counter than from a table. We enjoyed our food and soon joined the growing crowd in the streets.  We walked  by Cathedral de Santiago. Bilbao is on El Camino de Santiago, the route of pilgrims following the path of Saint James. 

After a good nights sleep and a quick breakfast we were on the road again.