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.
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