Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Bilbao: No Churro Left Behind


            This past Saturday I went to Bilbao for the day with some other girls in my program. We didn’t decide to go until the last minute, so decided that going just for the day would be better than trying to find a hostel and not being able to (trust me I’ve done that before and staying out all night is not as cool as you may think haha). We caught an early bus and were there in about 2 hours. We made a lot of stops, more than we were supposed to, but hey it’s Spain why not haha. I’m actually glad we made a lot of stops because it allowed us to see the beautiful countryside. We stopped in some of the most amazing little pueblos with vineyards galore and it made me really want to try and see La Rioja a bit more. The northern part of Spain is very different from the southern part in that there are lots of trees and the leaves change colors, so I felt like I was at home during fall, which was nice!
            Once we arrived in Bilbao we set off walking towards the Guggenheim. Bilbao used to be a pretty ugly and bad city, as it was all industrial and full of factories. Some time ago (not sure how long, but fairly recently I think), the government cleaned up Bilbao and changed it into an absolutely gorgeous city! I was half expecting our walk to the Guggenheim to be underrated but I was quite surprised with how green and how beautiful everything was! We stumbled upon a museum that had the ‘Bodies’ exhibit showing, so we decided to stop in and see the exhibit. 8 euro later we came out a little bit creeped out and disgusted, but much more informed of the human body and how it works (at least I came out with more knowledge haha). I’m glad we went to the exhibit because I had wanted to see it when it was in Chicago but never got a chance. Although it was very cool, I don’t know if I would pay money to go see it again, but that is also because I’m not a very science oriented person. If you are, then it’s amazing! After the bodies exhibit we, of course, decided we were hungry and wanted to eat (preferably some sort of cured meat haha… kidding!). We made our way into the center of the city and stopped and had a café con leche, which was just what we needed on a somewhat chilly day! It was only 12 noon, so of course no restaurants were serving food yet, so we just sat and people watched and enjoyed ourselves for a while before heading over to the Guggenheim. A teacher of one of the girls I was with said that the café in the Guggenheim was very good and cheap so we figured we would give that a shot. Clearly she is not in our program and is not making the ‘salary’ (I use that term very loosely haha) that we do. 18 euro for a sandwich is a bit much for me! So we found a nice German café where we had hamburgers and a pint of Cruzcampo (yes a pint!) all for 10 euro.
Entrance to the Guggenheim

Colored beans!
Reminds me of Christmas

Famous spider!

Amazing architecture

Front of the Guggenheim with the 'Puppy' sculpture

            The Guggenheim was up next on our list! I have always wanted to visit the museum and I am so happy I was finally able to do that. I am not a big modern art fan, but was extremely impressed with the museum! Just the architecture (designed by Frank Gehry) is incredible! The outside of the building may be better than the actual art inside haha. They had a Golden Age Dutch exhibit going on which was very interesting and much more my-style art. We were able to see all of the famous sculptures around the outside of the museum as well. After spending about 2 hours at the museum we walked around a bit more and then stopped for some churros con chocolate! Man oh man were they just what we needed! They, of course, were heavenly and we devoured each and every one of them. After the churros we had to catch the bus back home, which wasn’t nearly as fun because of the huge amount of fried dough sitting in our stomachs haha. Bilbao is definitely an interesting city and one I would love to go back to and spend more than one day exploring!
These were delicious and were devoured in about 5 minutes!

No comments:

Post a Comment