Guggenheim and Pintxos

 Saturday we experienced two wonderful tours bookending a long walk suggested by the guidebook. We ventured outside the hotel in search of better coffee but the closest cafe’s coffee was not much better. We had 2 cups anyway as the jet lag is real. 

We met our guide, Saioa, on the steps of the Guggenheim museum. It is an incredible building designed by Frank Gehry with a titanium shell and the shape suggestive of a ship at port. Bilbao had a long history of shipbuilding and selling iron ore. There’s also a limestone base to tie the building to the nearby university. And a water feature along one side that is the same color as the nearby River. There are two notable sculptures outside - a large flower covered puppy (pronounced poopy in Basque) and a spider that one can walk under. The puppy was supposed to be a temporary exhibit but the City liked it so much they asked to keep it. The spider invites visitors to come inside and it has a sac of eggs. It is a homage to the artist’s mother. Inside there was an enormous room with tall metal structures. We walked within the structures which are designed to evoke various feelings. The metal is the same used for shipbuilding and was various shades of rusty orange. Saioa said that originally all the structures were yellow but over the years the panels have changed to the orange color. She took us to a room with scale models of the structures and also showed us where we could look down on the room from above. It was disorienting walking through the labyrinth and other structures, but a very unique experience. We next visited the display of Yayoi Kusama, a Japanese artist with a “mental disease” that is a form of OCD. She is obsessed with dots, and there are red dots in the pool outside the museum as part of her exhibition. In addition to paintings, she had furniture and clothing covered with stuffed fabric tubes and gloves. It was very phallic. We next saw a word sculpture by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. It was a tall series of neon tubes with words running up and down in red, and on the other side of the tubes was a blue area. It was supposed to evoke a frightening experience that once you passed through was safe and soothing. We saw some of the permanent collection including Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe, created after she died so there is a lot of black, disturbing colors, and a large color block painting that took up entire walls. Finally we saw the Oskar Kokoschka exhibit. He was a very prolific painter of expressionistic portraits and landscapes. He fell in love with Mahler’s wife, Alma, and after she left him, he created a life-size doll in her form and took it with him everywhere. He painted several self-portraits including the doll, and when he finally decided he’d had enough, he threw a party where he destroyed the Alma Mahler doll with a knife. We found the story and his works fascinating. We went outside to see a mist that comes over the water feature every hour. That was the end of our private tour with Saioa, and while we were free to do more exploring on our own, we opted just to have lunch in the museum cafe. 

We then decided to walk a route suggested by the Lonely Planet guidebook. Note to self - this is a challenge using the kindle version of the book. We saw a couple of lovely parks, some nice churches and the modern town center. We saw but did not enter the Fine Arts Museum and the Nautical Museum. After a beverage stop, we returned to the hotel to get ready for our evening food tour. 

We had a ten-minute walk to meet our tour guide for the pintxos tour. Unlike the morning private museum tour, this was a small group tour. There was a couple from Florida, a family from England, a couple from Denmark and a couple from Hungary. Our guide Kaya was from California but had lived in Bilbao ten years. She came for college and never left. We had a very enjoyable time talking with all these folks. We went to five different pintxos bars and had a drink and one or two pintxos in each place. We were stuffed by the end. The drinks included white wine, red wine, cider and a drink called a Vermouth. We did not try the vermouth but one of the others raved about it so Nick tried one when we returned to the hotel. The pintxos ranged from spider crab with bechamel sauce to pork belly to a shrimp tempura. I found them all quite delicious. I tried to get a photo of the array of pintxos available at one of the bars, but I’m not sure I captured the display. All the bars were full of people. Even though this is holiday time when many locals leave town, there still were very few open seats at any of the bars. The very interesting group we were with made the evening. For example, the man from England is a fan of England’s rugby team and was very jealous that we are going to the World Cup next month. The Danish guy was very proud of his countryman who just won the Tour de France. I talked some politics with the gal from Hungary. It was a wonderful experience. 

We returned to our hotel and I enjoyed the white wine served by our favorite bartender. After sampling a Vermouth, Nick ordered a local beer and was served a beer called Lucia - Nick’s mom’s maiden name. Nick promptly inquired of his uncle and cousin if it’s possible they have Basque roots. 

Today we are on our own and it was suggested we take the train to Guernica, which we are going to attempt.