Today Libby, Rebekah, and I went to Bilbao, a city on Spain's northern coast, where the Guggenheim Museum is located. The drive took about three hours and was really lovely. We passed through farmland, rolling hills, mountain ranges, and saw dozens of small villages. I really like how so many of the villages and towns here in Spain seem to be built right around the local church. It's interesting to see from a point of view that shows you the layout of the town. Moving on, we got into Bilbao and easily found parking – despite what our guidebook said – near the indoor market. Bilbao supposedly boasts the largest indoor market in all of Spain. Unfortunately it's closed on Sundays. We found a bar, had a cafe con leche, and made a point of finding out where we were in relation to the museum.
When we'd determined how to get there we took the tram (they're bright green!) to the Guggenheim and got quite a good view of the museum's structure, designed by famous architect Frank Ghery. Climbing some stairs you come up to a very large shrub covered in flowers which is in fact a huge terrier plant sculpture. The museum entrance fee was only five Euros due to the fact that the third floor was closed because they were between rotating exhibits. The first and second floor are vast in size, but don't really house a ton of material. The Guggenheim has one of the world's largest galleries showcasing large abstract sheet metal sculptures that you can walk around and inside of. Some of them spiral, others are formed in flowing parallel lines. You're able to see a miniature model of the sculptures in a small room off the back of the gallery.
One of the coolest exhibits was a number of ticker lines (like the one used on Wall Street) that were installed vertically, and they had a message, which turned out to be sort of a poem/story that scrolled up the tickers, each at a different speed. After the story finished, it restarted in another language. It was cool because standing in front of it caused an immense sense of vertigo, but after a while if you looked up at them it made you feel like you were floating. The words scrolling up seemed like air bubbles in an aquarium or a glass of soda.
The second floor housed four different contemporary German artists, but I didn't really appreciate any of the works, aside from a large abstract sculpture in one room. The rest was mostly comprised of one of the artists in particular – Joseph Byues or something like that – and most of it just seemed to be personal belongings and crap with his name stamped on it. I suppose everyone's got an opinion of what is and is not art, and furthermore what is good and what is bad art. It just didn't catch my fancy is all. Oddly though the sculpture that I liked was by him as well. Go figure.
After the museum, which didn't take very long to tour, we followed the tram tracks into another part of town and tried to find some place to have lunch. No luck, so we hopped back on – we were bad and didn't buy tickets for the second trip seeing as no one checked or scanned our tickets the first time! - and made way back toward the “old” district near where we had parked the car. We wandered down the tiny side streets lined with shops closed for the day and lots of small cafes and restaurants – most of which were really overpriced. Finally we found one that suited us, waited for a few minutes for a table, and then had a tasty lunch. Rebekah started with a plate of mixed seafood, then had squid cooked in it's own ink. Libby had croquettas (deep fried balls of creamy sauce with bits of ham) and then endive, salmon, and tuna wraps. I started with an order of pork pate and my main course was a crock of lamb stew. Everything tasted so great – even the squid, which I tried. It left a slight aftertaste of brussel sprouts in my mouth. It was odd. We had a nice white wine with lunch that had some great grapefruit-like flavors to it.
After lunch we headed back to the car so we could find the Termibus Station where Libby was taking a 10:30 overnight bus back to Barcelona to leave for the US on Monday. We got a little lost after trying to follow the tram, but eventually found our way there. It was sad to see Libby leaving so soon, but luckily Rebekah will be going to the US in a week or so to do some work and take care of some things back home, so she will be able to see Libby again soon. We said goodbye to Libby after she got her bus ticket, and then got back onto the highway towards Santander, another coastal town. We drove along the coast for a long while with the ocean on one side and mountains on the other. It was really wonderful. On the down side, Spanish drivers can be really crazy, as twice on the way home someone passing people in the opposite direction nearly missed causing an accident. Eventually we headed south to get back to Moratinos, and got home just after 9pm.
When we came in, we found Paddy in the kitchen with Berndt, who was very upset. It seems that some things were said, and rumors heard about something he'd done and he was planning to leave. We weren't really sure what had happened, so we tried to calm him down, and managed to get him to agree to just wait until morning to leave, if at all, assuming things couldn't be sorted out. To make a long story short, it seems Berndt had gotten himself into some trouble and done something bad, and James and Sebastien insisted he leave Moratinos. There was quite the little drama unfolding in this sleepy little town, but by midnight or so everything seemed to be sorted out with minimal confrontation, and Berndt had left Moratinos. It was certainly an interesting end to my day, and made it clear to me that not everyone on the Camino is necessarily a good person – however, really, where in the world is that not true? It's unfortunate that bad things do happen sometimes, but it's equally important to remember that most of the time people should just mind their own business. All in all though, i don't think there are going to be any other issues here in Moratinos anytime soon.
Time to turn in and sleep now. Buenos noches!
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