Guggenheim? Maybe not...

The city tour Iñaki took me with was really long and beautiful. We saw Bilbao from the inside and from the outside, same with Getxo. While in San Sebastian the style of the buildings was influenced by French architecture, we found a more British, Tudor and Windsor style architecture in Bilbao. Especially there were many impressive old manors of that style. He showed me also a very interesting engineer's masterpiece from the Eiffel tower era: a special bridge of steel looking as a crane which carried a wagon with space for 100 people and 6 cars from one to the other side of the river. And we walked along a nice historical promenade where the history of some old houses and manors was explained. I realized that Bilbao was a highly developing city which changed a lot into a modern city during the last decade. We came home and had dinner at about 10:00am and after dinner we watched a nice Spanish movie which we talked about online before which described in beautiful pictures the development of a monogamic into a polyamorous relationship. After that we went to bed and it took only minutes until I was sleeping. The next morning he had to leave for work and I went to the new city center to visit the Guggenheim museum. While walking on the streets I had the impression that the spirit of Bilbao as an industrial city is still present almost everywhere. The buildings still have something of factory buildings, they are optically not that light but heavy, massive and strong. I wouldn't be much surprised if, going around the next corner, I saw a huge, massive steam machine working, pumping and stomping but I like it that this spirit is so present. Even the massive Guggenheim museum building, looking like an exploded metal box, fits into this picture. The actual exhibition was the art during WW2 which I thought would be quite depressiv. The line at the entrance was more than one hour, so I decided to watch the museum from the outside and move on. The city was really clean and nicely decorated with beautiful squares, allys with trees of good shape and interesting parks inviting to do sports or just hang around and relax. Today around noon I passed one week of travelling which to me was like one month due to the extremely great variety of fascinating cities and landscapes I saw and interesting people I met and got in close contact with and all the other impressive experiences I made. As to me, now I could go back home being full of impressions. But I want to move on and so I am very happy about writing this blog since I think that other impressions will come and those I have until now will probably more and more fade out. In the early afternoon I met Iñaki again and we went to have some lunch, some typical and traditional for this region. While waiting for the meal, I got an E-mail of a friend which touched me a lot... The meal consisted of a fish potatoe soup or some scrambled eggs with ham as first dish, Bacalao on a bed of fried potatoes or peppers with a special filling as a second dish and flan or filled wafers (Milhojas de Hojalde) as dessert. It was all really delicious, especially the Bacalao! Later we went to see several different beaches and stayed at the last one to swim in the waves, which were quite strong from time to time. Then we went to a beach bar and had some snacks and drinks and later we had Revuelto de Gulas for dinner and some typical cheese with fruit jam as yesterday. Then we watched another movie and went to sleep. By the way, I was asked why I am not posting any pictures. It's because I'm sending all those postings as E-mails from my mobile and I don't want to have too much traffic. If there's a computer available one day I will edit and post pictures and the translations. Good night home, good night Spain.

Per Mobiltelefon