Day 2 - Exploration of Bilbao

The reason Bilbao isn´t much of a tourist hot spot is probably due to it not having many things to visit or see. This however, did not stop us from filling our day easily, starting with making a visit to the largest undercover markets in Europe. It was certainly a sight to behold, especially the seafood section below, once you got past the smell that is! The row of pig heads was pretty errr, interesting shall I say.

Of course we had to go and see the star tourist attraction of the city, the Guggenheim Museum. Well, it is certainly an amazing piece of architecture that is for sure. It is said to be designed like a ship or a flower (quite different descriptions aren´t they!) with a 3mm titanium facade and sits ` floating´ on a water garden beside the River Nervion. Having exhausted every outer inch of the museo and having our photo with the Puppy, a 13m high West Highland terrier that has a coat of flowers watered by an internal irrigation system, we headed up a 3 minute tram to check out the view of the city. The city sits within high, bare hills and only covers an area of about 16km which mean the lookout took in most of the terracotta roofed view easily.

Our final mission was to go back to the markets and all purchase goodies for our picnic in the park. What a feast we ended up with and a siesta in the warming sun was just what we needed before we headed off to our buses. Kelly and I farewelled Nico who was off to Madrid for his Electric Weekend concert and we headed off on our bus to San Sebastian for some beach time.

Once we´d settled into our hostel there we enjoyed a few relaxing vinos and leftover cheese and breads from our picnic before enjoying a beach sunset with some of the other travellers staying at Olga´s Hostel. Having acquainted ourselves with the other hostel goers we were invited to join them on a night out enjoying the bars San Sebastian had on offer. Kelly and I certainly enjoyed ourselves, dancing to Spanish music to the small wee hours.

San Sebastian certainly was making a good first impression on us, we just hoped that the rest of our stay would continue to impress as much as our first evening had.