This weekend I went with a girlfriend I met through a church event (our meeting during Noche en Blanco a few weeks back in Madrid) to Bilbao and San Sebastián: two cities in the Basque Region in northern Spain.
We left at about 10:30 pm from Madrid to take an overnight train to San Sebastián. We slept in a 6-person bunk -dorm type room. The quarters were small, but it was fun. When we arrived I found myself to actually feel quite rested, and an overnight train is MUCH better than an overnight bus (see Barcelona blog ;)
When we got to San Sebastián, at about 7am, we immediately set off for the bus station to catch a bus to Bilbao to go and see the Guggenheim Museum there. The bus took about 1 1/4 hours and it was a BEAUTIFUL ride. It was the first time I have really seen a green Spain, but every turn brought a new picture-worthy seen of some sort.
When we got to Bilbao we headed to the Metro to see if we could figure out how to best get to the museum. Luckily A.)there was a stop that had the name "Guggenheim" in it and B.) everyone in Bilbao seems to be overly eager to help lost looking tourists. Anytime we spent more than five seconds looking at our map or staring at the metro sign, someone would come up and offer to help us figure out how to get to where we wanted to go. We were taken a-back by how friendly and helpful everyone was.
We got to the museum right around 10am as it opened. So, we got in without much of a problem at all. The irony of going to this museum was that it was in Spain but it was featuring an exhibition on American art! However, the pieces were really good, and I have never spent much time looking at American art before. They had divided the works into periods of history, ranging from paintings of George Washington and the USS Constitutions to recent abstract art pieces and works by Andy Warhol. My favorite parts of the museum were the architecture itself and the giant spider sculpture (see pictures below).
By early afternoon we caught a bus back to San Sebastián. We spent the rest of the day walking around San Sebastián. We ate at a little historic-looking cafe (where I got to have some Basque Cheese-see picture below) and we also had some really good gelato on Boulevard (the main street in the historic area).
We checked into our hostel, which was on a side street off Boulevard. The place was really unique and had a hippy-vibe (if you look at the picture of the chandelier below, that about sums up the whole vibe of the place). We went to bed between 11-12 in order to be ready for more sight seeing the next day.
We checked out of our hostel in the morning and set out to explore. We first went to a coffee shop we happened upon while walking randomly up and down some streets. We haven't encountered many coffee shops in Spain (most places are cafes-bars which cell coffee or tea but don't have the feel of a coffee shop like the ones in the US). So we had some tea and just relaxed while talking for a while.
After that we headed to see the Catedral del Buen Pastor (The Cathedral of the Good Shepard). It was a really beautiful building, and just as we arrived we saw a bride and groom walk inside for their wedding. Being the hopeless romantic I am, I naturally had to go have a peak. Other tourists were inside as well to check out the church with them…we ended up staying for the entire wedding! It was a really cool experience to see what a wedding is like in Spain. The choir that sang was amazing especially due to the good acoustics in this church. It was a very unique encounter with God, sitting in an impressive Spanish church and listening to classical worship music in Spanish…what a blessing.
After the church service we went and got some amazing gelato, for the second time that weekend…if you don’t know this about me by now, I am obsessed with frozen dairy, esp. gelato (or my favorite frozen yogurt spot at home ;). We sat on a bench in the sun in a park near Playa de la Concha and people watched. After that we read for a while and then did some window and souvenir shopping for a while, this of course included a good 40 minutes in a book store ;)
Then we grabbed some dinner and walked along the water back to the train station to take the overnight train back to Madrid.
HIGHLIGHT OF BILBOA AND SAN SEBASTIáN: Hanging out with a new friend I found I had sooo much in common with, eating good gelato, seeing a giant spider, and being immersed in the charm of San Sebastián’s beautiful boardwalk and boulevards.
BILBAO
1. Jeff Koons' Puppy outside the Guggenheim Museum
2.Modern art outside the museum
3. The museum's exterior, designed by Frank Gehry
4. Maman by Louise Bourgeois (my personal favorite), outside the museum
5. Park in Bilbao
SAN SEBASTIáN
6. Sagrado Corazón de Jesús (Statue of Jesus)
7. View of Concha Beach (Playa de la Concha) and Sagrado Corazón de Jesús (in the distance)
8. Playa de la Concha
9. Basque Cheese (yum!)
10. Chandelier in our hostel: about sums up how awesome it was ;)
11. architecture along "Boulevard" in the "Parte Vieja"
12. Catedral del Buen Pastor
13. Interior of the Cathedral (see the Good Shepard?) :)
14. Dusk image of San Sebastián
15. Nighttime shot along Río Urumea
1 comments:
what really makes that maman sculpture is that name, wonderful! I believe you have studied a bit of french or at least remember the opening to l'etranger, yeah?
that is interesting about the cafés. It seemed more the other way around in Germany. To some extent the cafés were still like cafes that served booze, rather than becoming bars that served coffee, but some did feel a bit different.
And that's pretty neat about the wedding. I encountered a Hochzeit when I was coming back down from the view at the top of the Berliner Dom, but had to leave after like 10-20 minutes : /. Was the wedding noticably different in the way it happened, i mean besides being in a cathedral.
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