Day 12 – Bilbao

June 30, 2019 – We woke up this morning excited to go to the Guggenheim Museum.  We bought tickets way in advance to be sure that we could get in as they only admit so many per hour.  We had reservations for 10 AM so we got there early and went to a café on the plaza to get some breakfast and cappuccinos.  After breakfast we walked around the outside of the building to have a closer look at the architecture and take some photos.  This is when Sharon was attacked by a huge spider. Hahaha, you have to see the photos.

When 10:00 rolled around we were running around the building trying to find the entrance…It was not clearly marked and the building is so unique, but we finally got in.

Unfortunately, once in the museum, we had very mixed opinions of the art exhibits. On the good side, we found the massive, combined interactive steel sculptures by Richard Serra called “Snake” & “Matter of Time” to be fun and fascinating to walk through. It was really beautiful and interesting and made the visit worth it. The Giorgio Morandi painting exhibits were also interesting to read about the artist, his inspiration by the Old Masters and how he expressed these through his own subtle style. Some of the other sculpture work was beautiful. On the negative side. the balance of the artwork we feel we could have done ourselves with a crayon…I don’t know, different strokes, I guess.  Other exhibits just did not seem to be art at all and were rather ugly in terms of their message.  For example, there was one exhibit that was nothing more than different colored photocopy paper affixed to the wall of the same saying in different languages including some about killing the rich, destroying the USA, etc, etc.  Another “piece of art” was a pile of condoms with “he doesn’t care about you” written on them.  It was all very negative and more radical political propaganda than art in our view. The basic message we came away with was Anti-American, men hating and hate speak.  Needless to say, we were very disappointed in some of the exhibits and moved on to more interesting and positive sights in the city.

We thoroughly enjoyed the outside though and as we were walking, Wayne found a new profession as a street performer…take a look!  He caught right on and I’m positive he could master his bubble making craft in no time.  I wonder how many euros a day he could make?  Surely enough for daily pinxtos and beer???

Next, we decided to walk through the park called Casilda Iturrizar Parkea which we were told is like the “Central Park” of Bilbao.  It was pretty and green with big lovely trees, nice lawns, kids playing in the beautiful fountains, cafes and people out enjoying the day.  We stopped at one café and got a beer, olives and tomato bread.  So good!  After a quick trip to the store for some snacks, we came home to siesta.

We woke up a couple hours later and decided we better get going on the blog so we blogged all night.  We had planned to go out for pinxtos again but we were so consumed with blogging.  We completely lost track of time and before we knew it, it was midnight and we could hear the restaurants closing down. Oh well.

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