I had never even heard of Bilbao until Mum told me I had to go the Guggenheim museum there. And since we had been going across northern Spain and had planned to finish in Barcelona, Bilbao conveniently turned out to basically be on the way.

Before visiting the museum we spent some time just walking around the city. It use to be an industrial port city until the Guggenheim was built. Now it's a city full of great architecture, art and heaps of greenery and parks. A very beautiful city to walk around. There was a few things in particular of note. One was an amazing glass building where every panel was at an odd angle creating a building that looked somewhat like a can that had been stood on and had awesome reflections of the surrounding area. There was only one building in the city which you'd call a skyscraper and it was situated right down the end of a main avenue and angled in at the avenue. So when you stood at the major roundabout (itself amazing, a huge garden in the middle) this building was just so imposing down the end. Then there were a couple of bridges, and pretty awesome pedestrian one, and an even more awesome road one right next to the Guggenheim. And we also discovered an awesome wine bar which made their own wine. You could even customise your own wine and get it delivered home.

Of course then we had the day we visited the museum. The museum is really more famous for its architecture than for the actual art inside, so I'll start there. The building is amazing. So unique the way it curves and sweeps. It kinda looks a bit like a ship. Not sure if that's what the architect was going for, but seeing as how it's on a river in what at the time was a port town, it's likely. There's also some interesting art on the outside such as a giant spider, a stack of mirror balls and a huge dog made out of flowers.

Of the exhibits on the inside I think my favourite was one which was a series of sorta mazes made out of huge sheets of steel. They weren't really mazes, mostly they were just spirals with the steel sheets going up at various angles. Sometimes closing in on you, other times opening up. But they were tall and walking through them just really messed with you. Sometimes you couldn't help but walked crooked or lean one way. Sometimes you got dizzy. I'm not exactly sure about the artistic merit of it, but I enjoy interactive stuff and this was really fun.

The first piece you notice when you walk into the museum though is one that is a part of a human body collection. In the main foyer area hanging from the ceiling at thin backs filled with sand or rice or something to varying levels, making bulbous dangling things which you can't help but just think looks like something from the inside of the human body, though you could never say which part in particular. Up on the next floor this collection continued in numerous rooms all usually consisting of stuff hanging from the ceiling and always with bags filled with various spices and such to try and get all your senses going. You were invited also to touch a lot of the pieces and there were instruments anyone could play. This collection was about the human body and he wanted all of your human sense involved in experiencing it. There was one room with nets hanging from the ceiling filled with plastic balls and winding its way down to the floor. You could get in a climb up to the top. It was fun and kinda hard work. According to the sign this piece represented the journey of the sperm to the egg.

On the top floor was the Yoko Ono exhibit which we had seen aggressively advertised all over the city. There was definitely some interesting pieces in this collection, though I'd be lying if I said I really understood any of its meaning. Probably wouldn't even be fair to the art to even try to say anything about it to be honest. It was interesting enough, I just didn't really get much out of it.

The afternoon after visiting the museum Ness and I decided to spend it away from each other. Have some alone time. She took a her Kindle and a bottle of wine down to one of the large parks and I took my Kindle to a pub and sat outside in the sun. I was going to head into the city to find a nice place, but it turned out that the place right next door to our hostel fit all the criteria perfectly. Nice beer, in the sun, on the river, with a great view of the Guggenheim (did I mention our hostel was right across the river from the Guggenheim?). It was during this time that I discovered that this bar also had a pool table which would surprisingly kinda lead to our next destination.

But before that was the Easter procession. They take Easter pretty seriously in Spain. And on the week before the Easter weekend all throughout the country on varying days they have processions down the streets of guys dressed up in robes and pointy hats (kinda like the KKK if they didn't only wear white). Many walked barefoot, most had either instruments or candles and some were pushing floats with religious scenes on top. It was also while we were waiting on the side of the road for the procession to pass us that I decided to try fried egg flavoured ice cream. It was disgusting.

That night we met a guy who went by DC, from Lithuania but living in Zaragoza on Erasmus. We chatted him and his friends for a bit and then we went next door and played some pool with him. He invited us to come stay with him for a few days in Zaragoza, which as luck would have it was about halfway between Bilbao and Barcelona. So we found a Blablacar ride to Zaragoza for a couple of days later.

On the day before we left we took a day trip to Las Arenas where there is a very interesting bridge called the Vizcaya Bridge. The interesting thing about this bridge is that it's not really a bridge. It's what they called a transporter bridge. Built in 1893, it was the first of its kind. Basically it's a bridge with two towers at either end and a platform across the top. The platform though has a mechanism which runs along rails carrying a carriage type thing from cables which hangs about 60m below the platform. This carriage can take both pedestrians and vehicles and runs back and forth across the river like a ferry. Basically it was built because they didn't want to interrupt the river traffic and they didn't really have enough room on either side of the river to build an actual bridge with long ramps. It only cost something like 30c to ride it, so we took it across, found somewhere for lunch and then took it back.

The next day we left for Zaragoza. Our ride was through Blablacar and while it only cost slightly less than the bus, it was far more comfortable, took half as long and allowed us to chat to a local.