Trip to Pais Vasco, Part II: Bilbao

Sunday began with a city tour of Bilbao. It was very similar to that in San Sebastian. If you wanted to hear what little they had to tell you about the different places in Bilbao, you had to fight to stick to the front, because they didn’t wait for everyone to arrive before speaking and they didn’t talk loud enough for everyone to hear.

You can barely see Bilbao's newest and tallest building.
This picture shows the mix of new and old architecture in Bilbao.

Look at the lovely brown river...

This is a theater that unfortunately hasn't had
as many productions put on because of the crisis.

Finally, it was time to go to the Guggenheim Museum. 

No pictures were allowed inside, unfortunately, but actually my favorite part was probably the building itself. 

'The Puppy'

My favorite piece in the museum was called ‘The Matter of Time.’ 

Source

You could walk through it or view it from above. You can read more about 'The Matter of Time' here. 

On our way home from Bilbao we stopped at a castle (that had a fence blocking it, but some people cross to go under the fence anyway) and a church on an island (more like a peninsula). 

Some people chose to hike out to the church. I didn’t go because I thought they had said we couldn’t because it would get too dark, but then people went anyway. Finally, we returned home.

I do not plan on traveling with ESN again. The trip seemed very unorganized and they changed the schedule randomly. The city tours were not worth my time, and I don’t enjoy traveling in a huge pack with 50 Americans. I have concluded that even though it’s more cost effective to travel with group rates, I would rather take fewer trips that I actually enjoy than more trips that I do not.