Sunday is truly the day if rest in Bilbao. Almost everything, including the supermarket across the street from our apartment, is closed. Very traditional. So that meant a morning in for us. Luckily, the other supermarket around the corner was open and I grabbed us some croissants. It was just after noon that we headed out in search of a transit card.
With that in hand, we took the bus to the bottom of the funicular. The line here was truly bonkers, and it took us about 5 funiculars to actually get on. The transit card is crucial here. Instead of a €6 round trip, we only paid €0.88! Our way up was in a middle step of the car and we could barely see anything and Emily hurt her hip holding Kieran. Luckily, there was a beautiful park at the top where we could sit and enjoy the view. You could really see the whole of Bilbao and even all the way to the sea. Even better, we got the front area of the funicular on the way back down.
We found an open grocery store and got provisions to make sandwiches in the park. Of course, we managed to find yet another playground for Jordan to run around at in the view of a famous pedestrian bridge. This one had some cool little hills with a tunnel through. The sandwiches were great and Kieran ate almost an entire tub of guacamole. Unrelated to that guacamole (probably), he then had a massive poop that we had to clean up on the bench. Very gross.
So we headed across the bridge towards the Guggenheim. The ramp did set off Emily’s hip, so I took the now-napping Kieran on a walk to the museum while Emily and Jordan grabbed the tram. This meant that I came across the giant spider first! And yes, this is the same spider as the one in Ottawa. I’m pretty sure these are the only two in existence? Maybe I should look that up. I reunited with Emily and Jordan at… You guessed it… A playground! This one was themed on the spider and had webbing all over the place, even to the slides. Very cool.
The highlight for Jordan is the giant puppy in front of the Guggenheim made out of flowers. That was our last stop before heading into the museum proper. The building itself is absolutely magnificent. The art inside is… Modern art. We went around all of the galleries in about an hour and nearly everything was like “seriously?” Though some of it was very beautiful like the wire art gallery. But one of the sculpture areas had this quote on the wall.
Richard Serra revolutionized sculpture as one of the first artists to free it from the pedestal and from its condition as a self-contained object bearing meaning.
Like wtf? How ridiculous. Emily asked me afterwards “what percentage of people actually see modern art and like it? 5 percent seems too high.” And it is hard to disagree. So we gave it up and we went to find gelato instead which was fortunately right across the street. After that delicious stop, we grabbed the bus back to our apartment to call an early night.
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