Our first day in Athens. Or: Anything but the Acropolis. We drove 45 min from the Campsite out in the sticks to a big mall (where we fit into the underground parking with our hight just shy of 2 meters) and after a breakfast used the great subway connection right into the heart of the City. Or more precisely: The ancient heart …
We had most of today to explore Bilbao. However, it was a two hour drive to our next camp ground in the Rioja valley. So we’d aim for a departure around 4pm. That’s fine, Number 3 can’t explore forever so it’s around the time we’d head to a camp ground anyway.
Nevertheless, we tried to be early. It didn’t really happen but it was made worse by the camp site. We still had to pay for the night but reception was closed and you had to press a button to talk to them and then they actually had to come over….it just took time.
Finally, we were in Bilbao again. We picked the same parking garage as yesterday as it was right in town. The Lonely Planet suggests an “Architecture and river views walking tour” through the newer part of Bilbao and we followed their suggestion. It started pretty much right where we’d parked. Very convenient.
We passed some of the old houses including the town hall and then went over the Puente Zubizuri. It’s a modern bridge, formed a bit like a wave. Now, on the other side of the river, it was but a brief stroll to the Guggenheim Museum by Frank Gehry. It’s funny how one building (okay, Flo stated that it is more a sculpture itself) can inspire so many artists to leave a sculpture or installation of their own in the vicinity. Yesterday we were lucky enough to see Fujiko Nakaya’s mist installation in action. Today we looked at all the other art around the Guggenheim, most notably Louise Bourgeois’ Maman and Jeff Koon’s Puppy.
Leaving the Guggenheim museum behind, we went through Parque de Dona Casilda de Iturrizar and past the museum of Fine Arts. It was getting towards our lunch time now but our selected restaurant opened at 1.30pm. That was still a while away so we bought some sweet treats to get through the wait.
Continuing through the Plaza de Frederico Moyua, we came to the inner city again.
We were too hungry though. Instead, we decided to split lunch into two again and have some pintxos now and then some pintxos later. Our first lunch place was Ledesma No 5. Again, no vegetarian pintxos were available but the lovely waiter only took a minute to come up with a vegetarian tapa topped with cheese that was especially prepared for me in the kitchen. 🙂
Our second lunch spot was the vegan restaurant La Camilla. Already half full, we decided to share a plate of sushi and I took an extra chickpea salad while Flo had a tempeh sandwich. Hm. We both had to wonder afterwards what it is with vegan restaurants to let us down so many times. Even vegan food in vegetarian places is usually better tasting that orthodox vegan stuff. Ah well …
It was 3 o’clock by now and we’re pretty down and tired. With the prospect of another 2 hours in the car, we left Bilbao and waved goodbye. Definitely well worth a city holiday if anyone is looking for recommendations. One more stop in a hypermarket to stock up groceries and we were on the drive to Rioja. Everyone except Flo fell asleep. Poor Flo. Always having to drive.
He managed to get us safe and sound to Haro, the capital of the Rioja region where we will stay for two nights. Tomorrow, it’s wine tasting time!
Not all here is idle procrastination and tropical weather today. For the first time in more than 25 days, we woke up to a properly overcast sky instead of the usual sunshine and puffy clouds.
No idea, should read more …
We cut our good morning skype call with our good German friend Sven short when Tig offered us a ride into town. Since we have been pretty laid back about exploring the city so far, I hopped on to the opportunity to get to town and check out the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. It turned out that I may have under consulted Nina on that decision – and most of that field trip was quite a drag for her, probably suffering a little from the after effect of the vaccination the other day.
The museum was nice, but nothing to get too excited about. The collection of aboriginal art was quite cool, but we were not in the right mood to engage with it properly I guess. In the end, we most enjoyed the exhibition about cyclone Tracy. This cyclone hitting the city on Christmas day 1974 led to the second almost total destruction of the City within 25 years (Japanese bombing raids in WWII marking the first one).
After a bus ride home, we spend the afternoon catching up on some youtube channels we really enjoy and got ready to cook another dinner for our generous hosts. I am glad to report that the amount of cheese in Jamie Oliver’s Italian pasta dish was universally well received, as was the strawberry-and-ice-cream dessert that Nina added to the mix.
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