Friday, July 5, 2024

Zaragoza to Bilbao


One last early morning in Zaragoza, and then a simply beautiful train ride - Pyreneen foothills - many forests, many streams - to Bilbao.  And look what's outside my hotel room window!  I think this may possibly be the only Jeff Koons I've ever liked, kitsch though it is.


It'll be the Guggenheim Museum itself tomorrow - seen from the outside, at least from this angle, one might as well be in downtown LA.


And I really, really like Bilbao - like nowhere I've ever been (and that's not just because Basque is an isolate language - i.e., in its ancientness, unlike any other language on earth.  So yes, one can learn basics to be cheerfully polite - Kiaxo is Hello, Eskerrik asko is thank you - but I doubt these will stick.  And no, Duolingo doesn't have a course in it).

The architecture is ... like a Baltic port meets France meets, yes, Spain.



I'd signed up for a pinxtos (that's tapas, in Basque) and local wine tour this evening - which was three hours of informed bar crawling (noisy bar crawling, since Spain was playing in the Euros) and utterly delicious.  Who knew that there was a Basque-perfected way of cooking octopus tenderly?  But I do now.



 

No comments:

Post a Comment