A very unusual day for us – we got to sleep in a bit and yet we had an excursion.
One of the challenges of a late breakfast on the ship is that breakfast is technically over at 11:00 a.m. So in theory, it’s still breakfast at 10:30. But the kitchen crew has already started to prep for lunch. We’re shuffled to the side of the restaurant where literally we’ve never sat before and now the food options are much more limited.
Will there be bananas?
No omelets?!?
And I don’t see any biscuits.
You can see how tough the cruising life is.
But we still had plenty of time. Our tour didn’t meet until noon. The instructions were confusing – we were to meet outside the cruise ship terminal. Where outside the terminal? No clue.
It didn’t get any better once we were wandering outside on the cruise ship terminal. Nobody knew what was going on – the buses aren’t here yet (but there’s no place to wait), oh but there’s the bus, no that’s not the right one, oh look there’s the right one and everybody is already boarding. Somehow they got the word.
Our tour guide is Marie (Maria?). As the bus leaves the terminal, she explains that we are actually in the collective township of Getxo (pronounced Get-cho). “Getxo” is a Basque word, because we are in the Basque Country, yet another part of Spain that doesn’t want to be a part of Spain (up there with Catalonia, where Barcelona is located), but they are kind of stuck at the moment. Periodically the Basque separatists generate violence, but good news, they don’t seem to be doing that at the moment.
Our first stop is at the Guggenheim Museum – we’re not going in, we’re just going to look at it:
Bilbao used to be a shipbuilding center. The shape of the building reflects that in the building’s fantastical ship-like shapes.
Greeting visitors is a huge puppy made of flowers. The flowers are swapped out as the seasons change:
We had about 20 minutes to wander around to look at the building or maybe go into the museum shop. As usual for these kinds of very short stops, I spent most of it locating the museum bathroom and battling the crowds around the elevator (because of course the bathrooms are on the museum’s lowest level). I ended up walking up a huge flight of stairs, because the elevator was so slow, people got on it to ride down in order to ride up to the upper floors; therefore, when the elevator arrived on the lower level, it was always full. Two attempts at this was enough, and I just trudged up the stairs.
We’ve all brought all our rain gear today in hopes that doing so will provide insurance against actual rain. It worked until I came out of the museum after the bathroom hunt. It poured intensely until, of course, I climbed onto the bus, and then it stopped.
Now we were on our way to Bilbao’s old quarter. The bus stopped in front of one of two churches we were going to see today (from the outside).
I have long since reached the point in this adventure that all the churches run together in a blur; unless there’s something particularly special about a particular church, the details evaporate. Such is with this church – is this the one dedicated to St. James (Santiago)? Not sure:
Then we walked to a huge square, where the restaurant was located for the “tapas” part of the tour. Unfortunately, the tapas were not very good, but it was a good opportunity to sit for a while.
After the tapas, we walked through the old quarter, and found the second church (maybe this one is the one dedicated to Santiago?).
Santiago keeps coming up as he is the focus of the Camino de Santiago – or the Way of St James, a pilgrimage route to a shrine in northwestern Spain. Bilbao is on the Camino – there are Camino markers in the street:
We had enough time to buy a treat – we got a huge chocolate horseshoe-shaped sandwich cookie. Yum!
The Basque Country has its own language, unrelated to any other European language. All the street signs are in both Spanish and Basque:
And then we were back on the bus and back to the cruise ship. Though not a particularly exciting port, the tour was relaxed and at a nice slow pace.
Normally I stop here, but the evening had a few notable moments:
- There was an amazingly stunning performance of Broadway tunes by the ship’s best singers.
- There may or may not have been some Sheldons involved in disrupting the ship’s piano player’s rendition of “Sweet Caroline” by shouting “WHOA WHOA WHOA!” And “SO GOOD SO GOOD SO GOOD!”. Multiple times. The piano player, being a good sport, played along with us. Maybe. We admit nothing.
- There may or may not have been some Sheldons (the ones of the same mother), playing “Elevator Bingo” at some ungodly hour of the morning:
Tomorrow is a sea day, and we actually have a couple of tasks – meet with UK immigration officials, so they’ll let us into England on Friday, and pack up.
Thursday – Paris!
Friday – England! Tally ho!
Maryland Meshugas 