Woke up on the later side today, and after doing my ever-important Wordle (the streak continues!), shower, and a bit of laundry, it was breakfast time. Since we opted to skip the 10€ each breakfast here at the hotel we went to the place about 30 seconds away and had our coffees and croissants for less than 10€ total (to be specific in dollars, it came to $9.67). Yes, sometimes we are thrifty that way.
Then back to our room we went, to decide what today should bring. It was much quieter outside, but still there is a bit more noise than in any other city we’ve visited. (The music in our breakfast spot was rather loud. Of course, typical of me, I didn’t recognize songs at all, so I googled one. Heh. Serena Gomez. We’ve seen her on Only Murders in the Building but, while I knew she was a pop singer, I’d never heard anything of hers before. Quite different than her morose character on OMitB.)
Dan checked out ideas and we settled on things and went out the door. The timing was perfect, as there was a little parade out front!
Then we followed a similar but not identical route, because we had already decided where we’d get lunch. (Sure, we didn’t eat breakfast that long before, but we only had coffee and a croissant so why not? Besides, we are in Bilbao and PINXTOS!
I took some photos as we walked, of course. This time that included a menu we saw that was of interest to us.
And then we ran across this. I don’t know what kind of weight lifting event this is, but the woman was clearly able to lift the thing multiple times. I didn’t even record the whole thing!
More walking to our destination, so a few more photos.
And then, where are we, you ask? Well, we went to the same place we had pintxos yesterday. I have to laugh at us sometimes: there are a zillion possibilities and we end up at the same place. Still, we did order from a different place, and that counts for something, I think. Oh … and we’ve noticed the use of “collaboration” several times now. So I think it means more than I think it means. Or something.
After our lunch (which, honestly, was quite light), we walked up the “not a river” for a time. And yours truly figured out she had north and south completely switched around. As always. We reached a place where there was selling going on. I saw coins, books, DVDs, and at the next stand, plants.
This man caught my eye because he was holding a clock and eyeing it the whole time.
More walking, including the Zubizuri bridge, some team that walked by (CCF?), a quick view of the Guggenheim Bilbao, and then to the Funicular de Artxanda or Artxnada ko Funicular, you choose.
We had read that the views at the top would be good. We read correctly!
We did a little walking then, and noticed so many playgrounds. I should have taken photos, I suppose, but you’ll have to trust me: we saw a good number. I did shoot graffiti, though. Go figure.
We took the funicular back down, and then made our way to Guggenheim.
This time we did go over the Zubizuri bridge which took us over “not a river”.
Okay, to explain about “not a river”. I had been calling it a river, and then Dan read that it was an estuary. I prefer calling it “not a river”, but the funny thing was that when I took the video neither of us came up with the correct name!
This is a sculpture called Las Sirgueras (The Rope Girls) and is by Dora Salazar. The rope girls used only ropes to pull vessels full of iron down the “not a river”.
We didn’t go in to the museum (we have tickets for another day), but we spent some time taking photos.
I loved seeing Jeff Koons “Puppy”.
More walking …
Then back to our hotel we went, for a brief siesta or blogging session. I wonder who did what?! But, well, someone might not have napped after all because we opened the balcony door to let fresh air. It’s much quieter here today, but then … ta-da! … an accordion arrived. We now know, since we walked by the sax player yesterday on our way to dinner, that the buskers are pretty much right below our room. We are on the second floor, so we are above them, but boy does that sound travel. (When we went up near the Guggenheim (thank you for the alert, Lisa!) we saw another hotel we had considered. It was very quiet, but we agreed we are enjoying being in the middle of it all!)
And why do I know this tune so well? Someone know?
As a sort of off topic aside, as most people know I’ve pretty much lost my hearing in my left ear. It happened shortly before our 2023 ten week trip and I’m pretty much used to it now. When we were on that long trip, I’d sometimes ask Dan, “Do you hear some sort of faint Gregorian chant or something?” He never did. My ears were playing tricks with me: when there is a lot of noise I can’t hear clearly, and somehow my brain turns the noise into the faint sound of shingling. Sometimes it’s all men. Sometimes not. It’s always some sort of chant, though. That just happened here, as the sounds down below, now sans accordion, meshed together and I heard men singing. It’s not all together bad: I do love a good Gregorian chant now and then. Later tonight it was a men’s group singing a drinking song. Yes. Really. Am I crazy? Well, of course. Am I crazier than I thought. Um … don’t answer that!
But I ramble …
Finally, dinner! Let the dinner search — a comedy, really — begin. We started out looking at a few places we saw earlier in the day, along with some I saw online that got good reviews. But no, we can’t just settle that quickly. So we walk some more. And more. And then we end up where we began, at a place I’d just seen with good reviews. (At least we got more walking in, right? But still my Apple Watch is not impressed.) There were instruments on the wall. A good omen?
When we went in we were seated, looked at the menu, and had a question about the monk fish since it looked like it was at market price. We asked our waiter. Both of us heard “fifteen” and assumed it was 15€ per some sort of weight. Fine! I’ll get that, thank you very much. Dan ordered the cod. We also got “natural asparagus”. And OH the yum factor was very, very high.
Then the bill came. My fish wasn’t 15€ per something, but it was 50€ total! Eek! Well, this has turned into the most expensive dinner on the trip. Go figure. But still, it was delicious, and in our neck ‘o the woods it probably would have cost us a total that was twice as much. Still, I think we need to be more careful and ask for clarification on things sometimes.
Once dinner was done (after 22:00), we went outside and headed back to our hotel. Sort of. Someone (I won’t name him) got turned 90° off once we entered the Plaza Nueva. Someone else (I won’t name her either) was correct in her directions. No need, though, to point out who was wrong or who was right, yes?
And now goodnight. We’ll see what excitement tomorrow brings. I’m hoping it’s not the 50€ sort of excitement, but you never know !
