Pat enjoys walking as part of her regular routine at home. Her fitbit keeps her steps score and today we reached 24K, which is a pretty decent day! The population of Bilbao is over 330K so it's a good sized city. The tourist area of Bilbao is also fairly large. We thought about doing some of it on our bikes but in the end decided it would be easiest to walk it. Although there are lots of bike lines, it is a hilly city with lots of stairs that are not so convenient for bikes.
The day started off cloudy and a bit cool so we used this as an excuse as a bit of a reason to be slow off the mark. With a tourist map in hand, we spent four hours wandering the various areas of Bilbao. We found Bilbao a great place to visit. There are many ornately designed buildings built in the late 1800`s and early 1900's as well as Bilbao’s Casco Viejo (old town) with its narrow streets to get lost in. Being Sunday, most shops were closed and so pedestrian traffic was quite light.
On a weather watch. Monday departure looks good and some dry periods everyday beyond. But being coastal, things are constantly changing.
This is the Zubizuri bridge. Zubizuri means “white bridge” in Basque. It was built in 1997 to accompany the Guggenheim development. It had an all glass tile surface that proved hazardous in Bilbao’s damp climate, earning it the unfortunate epithet “Bridge of Broken Legs”. There is now a non skid surface over the tiles.
An original chimney, as a sculpture in tribute to the old foundry. It is on the left bank where the factories making steel, smelting and shipbuilding were located.
We were a bit outside the tourist area when we turned on to this local street and found it full of people. We thought that we might find some lunch but the people were only drinking beer. This seems common - lots of cervesas but not much food!
But it is just a saved façade and is now the home of a movie theatre. Really neat building actually and we saw a few of these redevelopments in Bilbao.
As you can see, Bilbao is an architecturally rich city. Our day was great fun seeing this wonderful place. I think I will leave it at that. Tomorrow we are back on the bikes and heading to the coast. Hopefully we will see you then.
