7 Countries in 30 days. Step 13: Bilbao (Spain)

The wonderful girl of Bilbao information office says that we commit a crime if we don’t visit Guggenheim Museum. Only because has been her to say it, we go there and we take a picture with the mastodontic dog made with flowers at the entrance, but considering the ticket price and our lack of interest for modern art, we choose to commit the crime. A funicolar bring us on the top of the hill, from where we have a great view of the city and we plan a tour comparing the map with what we see above us.

Giacomo improvises guide and he follows the travel guide till the Basket Stadium of the Basque city. Bilbao is huge and I don’t dislike it, but it’s not able to fascinate me as other places visited during this journey. Back to the hostel, I read on the Couchsurfing website that a girl is suggesting a festival in Algorta: a little coastal village not far from the city center. We don’t have better ideas, so we try this evening, and when we arrive the surprise is amazing.

Thousands of people drinking beer from glasses hanging from the neck with rubber cords, eating giant sandwiches and dancing on a big lawn along the sea. Disco, reggae, ska music and even a live metal concert alternate on the different stands of the fair. Masquerade people pass through the crowd arousing laughters in the lanes of the little town, while on the long walk of the marina the botellon is the activity in vogue for the young people groups. We go to dance in casual groups between beer and laughters. I realize how much happy I am for these days in travel with Giacomo, because to share this experience is making our friendship stronger.

They are tearing down the old football stadium, when we are going in the morning from the hostel to the center. We search for a strange building eyed yesterday: a boundless room, of hundreds of square meters, is full of different columns. Painted, carved, of every shape and color. A girl in the hostel, while we was having breakfast, suggested us to see a curious thing: there is a swimming pool with glass floor and from the floor below you can see the people swimming from above. Unfortunately it is closed for cleaning. So we choose to go to see a sea place, because in the city there’s not much more to see.

The little town is nice, the beach is not bad, the sea is not too cold. The afternoon pass fast on the ocean coast and on the evening we try a dinner based on paella. We know that it isn’t the best place in Spain for eating it, but we don’t care. Around the streets there’s not anybody, probably they’re all at the festival Algorta. But Bilbao by night, between 40 years old ladies who try with us and gays’ bars from which we have to escape, becomes a laughable alternative.

 

The last day is torrid. We barely slept and the heat destroys us. At mid-day we take a train to Miranda de Ebro: from here we have a night train to Lisbona, which at first sight seems better than the one we took in Marseille. Everything changes when we find out to have, sit in front of us, the fattest and ugliest child ever seen. The whole night his parents and he change their places, while the mother sing so hateful and the father imprecates (maybe for the wife he choosed). The fat infant, complaining and saying “Mamà, soy gordo!” (= Mom, I’m fat!), refuses every position and he even ends with a leg on me and the head pending down from the sit. I would like to kick it. The most exhilarating scene arrives when, in the middle of the night, the father, exhasperated, pulls the trolley down from the luggage rack and tries to use it as a bed for the little ball of lard.

Andrea Cuminatto

READ HERE THE STEP N°1: Munich (Germany)

READ HERE THE STEP N°2: Bayreuth (Germany)

READ HERE THE STEP N°3: Bruxelles (Belgium)

READ HERE THE STEP N°4: Bruges (Belgium)

READ HERE THE STEP N°5: Antwerp (Belgium)

READ HERE THE STEP N°6: Delft (Netherlands)

READ HERE THE STEP N°7: Rotterdam (Netherlands)

READ HERE THE STEP N°8: Amsterdam (Netherlands)

READ HERE THE STEP N°9: Luxembourg (Luxembourg)

READ HERE THE STEP N°10: Marseille (France) 

READ HERE THE STEP N°11: San Sebastian (Spain)

READ HERE THE STEP N°12: Guernica, Bermeo, Mundaka, San Juan de Gaztelugatxe (Spain)