Our 5 hour bus ride left Thursday night from the Madrid bus terminal at 1:30am, depositing us in Bilbao before the sun rose. Since we had an hour and a half to kill we walked down to the river and went to see the sunrise behind the Guggenheim museum (which is just as cool as everyone says, Frank Gehry did a great job designing it!)
The Guggenheim had some really great pieces, and some pieces where you just kind of scratch your head and think, "Hm... my 11 year old brother could've done that!"
Here is the basilica up from the Casco Viejo (old city) where I accidently attended mass on Friday... it was a weird service? We just said the Padre Nuestro and Hail Mary over and over. Thank God my 7th grade Spanish teacher had us learn those... But it was kind of nice to have some time to myself in a church.
That evening we went out with another American and some Austrians (one who was living in Bilbao) and we had PINCHOS. Which are like tapas, as displayed below. This was the best thing EVER. Expensive, though, at 1.50 euro each :)
In the pic below: Fred the Californian, Devon my travel buddy, me, and Verena the Austrian. Marco, the one taking the pic, was our guide for the night.
The next day Devon and I joined a group of Spanish and French students on a tour through Bilbao. The most interesting part about the group is the fact that they defaulted to English, since most of the French students didn't speak Spanish and vice versa. But the tour included an hour long trip to the Palacio Congreso, a new-er 81 million euro conference center designed like a boat. It was gorgeous, below is a picture of the main auditorium (also boat shaped).
I know a girl studying in Bilbao right now, and as beautiful as the city is I think it would be hard to stay there for over a weekend... there's not a ton to do. But then again I guess it's like Spokane, where the tourist activities are a little bit limited but it's still easy to have a great time with friends.
Also hostels are growing on me... I am kind of a hard sleeper (okay, "kind of" is false, I am an incredibly bad sleeper) but I'm willing to sacrifice sleep in order to meet new people. Facebook has completely changed the hostel dynamic now; people who in past years would be "weekend friends" now exchange info so we can be facebook friends, even if we will probably never see each other again...
But I won't be in a hostel until mid April now, and I'm okay with that ;)
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