Bilbao, first impressions

Hi everyone! I'm going to tell you about one of the last trips I've done in Spain with university. Last year we went to visit the city of Bilbao. I had only been there once before, when I was younger, so I didn't remember anything about it at the time.

Arrival and hotel

We left Zaragoza very early, we went by bus make some pit stops. During the trip we read a guide that one of the teachers had prepared, it had timetables and information about all the places we were planning to visit.

Just as we were getting closer to the Basque Country, the landscape became greener whereas the sky was turning more and more grey. We passed through several tunnels, every time there were more mountains. This environment contrasted so much with the dry expanses of the Zaragoza province. I have always preferred the north to the south.

When we arrived there were hardly any clouds, better that it was a good day. The first thing we saw was that many roads went up and down making curves. And there was especially a lot of green, trees and grass... everything was very lively, also we were there in the middle of Spring.

We travelled the roads and followed the signs to get to the city. The first thing we did was to go to the hostel and get settled as soon as possible. The hostel was very good, there were rooms with bunk beds for many people and common areas. Once we'd unpacked, we took what we needed and went to see the city.

First visits

It was now time to eat, so we looked for a restaurant in the area we wanted to visit. It was a little chilly so we had light jackets. Once we'd finished eating we set off for the first place that we were going to visit, the Torre de Iberdrola. It stood out amongst the old buildings, and as we had a good view of it we starting taking photos.

As we were the first to arrive, we spent a while walking around it, some of us were fascinated by how tall and slim it was.

It has a wider base and within you can see that there's greenery. We took many photos in the lower part whilst we waited for the others.

The tower was next to the river. After listening to the explanation our professors gave us of the building, we went towards there.

We crossed to the other side of the river via bridge, we were climbing it, and they were pointing out the buildings we could see from there. We left the Iberdrola tower behind but we returned towards it to see some of the buildings that were on that river bank, specifically the Bizkaia Aretoa UPV/EHU, which we visited, and the CRAI Library, which was just to the side.

Continuing on the route we took, we arrived at the Guggenheim Museum, one of the most iconic buildings of the city. I had only seen it from the outside beforehand, and it seemed very impressive. I wasn't even studying architecture, but they told me that it's believed that Frank Gehry designed it on a napkin that he'd previously crumpled up. All these shapes seemed to be moving, and wherever you looked the building always seemed different, from all angles.

We took a long stroll before going in, round the whole building, which took some time and we couldn't stop taking pictures of the building, but of course, it seemed to be constantly changing. We walked across a type of bridge that separated its pond from the river. We carried on taking photos, we climbed some stairs towards a bridge, and then we took more and more photos.

As we had almost completely circled it, we were now far from the entrance, and we'd also descended quite a few stairs. We had to go up some new staircases that took us to a road that was above with a big red arch of very striking shapes, you go under the tracks whilst going up a metal structure.

Once we reached the top, a new view, we took more photos. And we walked next to these tracks towards the entrance to the museum.

There were musicians in the entrance and it wasn't too cold, it was quite good weather. To enter one had to go down a staircase that descended under some large posters that were announcing the exhibition of Andy Warhol and another of Louise Bourgeois.

Once inside we left our rucksacks, bags and coats. We took some audio guides and went deeper into the museum. I, who'd never seen it from the inside, was astonished, in the central part they explained to us that the shapes simulated fish, that it was an abstraction of the sea. The interior also seemed very complicated but equally very pretty.

We went through the museum from top to bottom, I think we saw all the exhibitions that they had at the time.

The building also has an installation of big sculptures in its interior which has been there since it was constructed. There's also a room which explains them, with a a replica to scale of this installation. There were huge, you could run your eyes over them in a thousand ways, some even made you feel dizzy.

There was also some sculptures outside such as the Spider or the Tulips.

The day was very long, after the visit we couldn't go to dinner, some of us (especially me) were even falling asleep during the dinner.

We went to the hostel and that night we slept like babies, thinking on what the next day would bring.

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