Along The Nervión River
The Nervión river runs through Bilbao and it was a good place to walk in the sun.
It may have been the time of year, but there were very few cafes along the river.
The Bilbao Metro
The Bilboa Metro is only about twenty years old, so it still has a new feel about it.
Note the name of fosterito in tribute to Norman Foster, who designed a lot of the architecture. Read more about the design of the Metro here.
I can’t understand why I’ve never seen fosteritos on other Metro systems, as they work superbly, as covers for the up and down escalators. They also stand out from a distance and act as locators for the stations.
I liked it except for a couple of small points.
I like to surf down handrails with one hand for safety and this was difficult, as the hand rail supports tended to catch my hand. The DLR is the same in places.
I also had some trouble with buying the Barik card, which is their version of London’s Oyster. I needed cash, as the system didn’t seem to work with any of my cards.
All Metro, tram and bus systems, should be like London’s buses and accept any bank card with a touch ability.
This is one thing that will happen worldwide.
The biggest advantage is that to top up my Barik card, I was constantly using up small change and notes, as I explored the city. With a bank card as a ticket, all you need to do is make sure you’ve credit available.
One piece of trivia for a pub quiz, is that the Bilbao metro map, must be the only non-UK map, with an English town shown as a destination. Look at the map in the pictures and you’ll see a ship labelled Portsmouth.
Exploring Bilbao
Bilbao is an easy city to walk around, although there are virtually no maps, except rudimentary ones at Metro stations.
As you can see the weather was good and I found it helped my health, as it was mild and humid.
Bilbao also seemed to have a lot of clocks, most of which were working and showing the correct time. As Liverpool is the same, is this due to the connection with the sea?
Attention To Detail At The Guggenheim Museum
This picture shows a handrail around a part of the building, where I suspect a few might have bumped their heads.
Attention To Detail At The Guggenheim Museum
The building might be good from an architectural point of view, but I suspect many visitors will complain about some of the walking around the building, with lots of long staircases.
A Fabulous Building! Shame About The Art!
These pictures show the quality of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
Unfortunately, it had a collection of the most indulgent and useless art I’ve ever seen.
Except of course for the marvellous Puppy. But you don’t need to go in to see that.
That was the only art with any colour, except grey and brown.
One whole floor was given over to enormous curved steel structures. They would have been so much better in a public space, rather than hidden in a museum.
But the worst piece, was a slide carousel showing continuous images on the wall. All of the slides were blank. If that’s art, I’m a Chinaman!
I would advise visiting the museum on a fine, sunny Monday, as I did.As then, the museum is closed and you can just enjoy the building, the Puppy and their setting.
Grooming The Puppy
Puppy is an artwork by Jeff Koons outside the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
As it was Monday and the museum was closed, the puppy was being spruced up a bit.
The Anonymous Widower 