The Bikepacker: Bikepacking 2024 - Rest day #1 in Bilbao

Day #

State of Legs

:-)

	Distance (miles)	Distance (km)	Ascent (feet)	Ascent (metres)	Punctures
Today	0 miles	km	0 feet	metres	1
Trip Totals	1246.6 miles	km	45048 feet	metres	1

Today's Route

No cycling today

Route So Far

Travelogue

Today is the first of two full "rest days" here in Bilbao. We also have a third day ahead of us where we'll be catching an afternoon ferry back to Portsmouth and this will afford us even more time to explore or just to relax somewhere.

This morning, we walked from the apartment to the local park and then down a million steps to the old town and then to the river. At the river, we crossed over to the other bank and walked around several of the river's bends, eventually arriving at the Guggenheim Museum. Along the way, we admired various buildings and every one of the many bridges that we passed. Bilbao is proud of its eclectic mix of bridges and rightly so. The morning sun was in just the right position, causing attractive reflections of bridges and buildings in the water.

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is world famous. It's one of a collection of museums that are located in various parts of the world. We visited the one in New York about twenty years ago and M1 remembers enjoying it very much.

The first and perhaps most notable thing about the Bilbao museum is the building itself. It's quite remarkable with its sweeping curves and golden metallic surface which gleams in the Bilbao sunshine. There are works of art located around the exterior as well, a huge spider sculpture being the first you encounter as you approach along the river bank. There's an equally enormous cat made from living flowers on the other side of the building, too.

We paid our 36 Euros to gain entry to all exhibits on all three floors and went in.

The main exhibition on the ground floor was of a series of enormous metal sculptures, each made of curved sheets of weathered steel. You can walk within the sculptures, each having a unique non-symmetrical shape. Spirals and ellipses are suggested by these weighty forms but they defy standard nomenclature with walls that lean at unexpected angles and their very size preventing a proper appreciation of the object and the space it occupies. It isn't until you see the works from above, possible from a balcony on a higher floor that you see the sculptures properly and appreciate their grace as well as their domineering size and weight. This is a permanent exhibit called The Matter of Time and it's by an artist called Richard Serra. We liked it very much.

Unfortunately, it was more or less downhill from there!

The other floors largely contained paintings, including a collection of pop art. Now, pop art isn't a style we particularly like. We've seen our share of Warhol and Lichtenstein and some we've liked, but never with enormous enthusiasm. It's just a matter of taste, I guess. So, the Guggenheim Bilbao collection of pop art was never likely to win us over, and it didn't.

We liked one or two other paintings but much of the work on display had us regretting not having kept more of the "art" our children brought home from school to be displayed on the fridge door when they were aged 5 or 6. Apparently it could have been worth a small fortune by now. We were quietly amused when we read that one of the artist's methods involved "not thinking while painting". It was beginning to all make sense!

It took us all of 45 minutes to see everything even with the relaxed pace we adopted and a quick look in the shop on the way out.

There's a coffee bar with open air seating nearby so we retreated there to drink coffee and reflect. M1 accidentally got in "conversation" with a British couple at the next table who on learning we'd cycled to Bilbao, proceeded to tell us without any hesitation, just how much they hated cyclists and how they were in favour of stringing them all up! M1 tried to "cure" them of their views largely by explaining that we were nice cyclists who didn't do any of the series of evil things that apparently cyclists are all guilty of, but he failed. M2 was telegraphing "get me out of here" in eye blink Morse code. Eventually M1 received the message and we escaped. LOL. This is what happens when you make the mistake of talking to other British people on holiday. Or in fact ever :-)

We walked back, up the million steps, through the park and to the supermarket where we bought what we needed and headed back to the apartment for a relaxing afternoon. There are chairs outside where you can sit in the sun and it is a lovely day.

That's it for today. Apparently there's one of those football matches that M2 likes on the TV later so we're probably going to watch that. England are playing. Oh the excitement.

Photos!