Bilbao
7/25/2025 - 7/29/205
We left Santander and headed east about an hour to Bilbao where we spent our final 4 nights in Spain. Emily and Brian left on 7/26/25.
Bilbao is a great city with a population of about 350,0000! It is in Basque Country and considered the “de facto capital” of Basque Country. Once in the Basque region of Spain, it is quite different from the other regions of Spain we had visited thus far (roughly 7 - including previous trips). They speak an entirely different language and very much want to secede from Spain. They have their own cultures and traditions and see themselves as completely autonomous from Spain. The second largest Basque community in the world is in Boise Idaho! They have a huge Basque festival every 5 years – Kerry, if you’re reading this, maybe you have been to it?
We didn’t get very good photos as it was drizzly the day we had available to explore the town. So you have to take our word for it that it is definitely worth visiting!
One of the main attractions of Bilbao is the Guggenheim Museum. The outside of the building is pretty incredible with several gigantic sculptures – a giant spider and an enormous puppy made entirely of flowers. The puppy was probably my favorite part of the whole museum!
I am admittedly not sophisticated enough to really appreciate a good art museum, so the inside of the Guggenheim was a bit anti-climactic in my opinion. To be fair, Emily actually likes art museums and she too was underwhelmed (so maybe there is still hope for me!). Some of the displays were kind of cool, but most I simply didn’t understand. All were very BIG and most had some kind of social message.
We also got to enjoy a huge outdoor blues festival while we were there which was really awesome! Emma and Dan… you would have loved this! There was live music throughout the day!
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