Bilbao, and to Santillana del Mar

The main adventure for today was to look and wonder at the magnificent structure that is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. The drive there from Zumaia took quite a while and we didn't arrive until midday. Having downed a quiet pastry and coffee we paid up our money (and got ripped off ) and spent the next few hours wandering around, most of the time marvelling at the incredible design of the place. John will no doubt be able to express this far better than me, but I found the dynamic curving lines of the skeleton of the building and small gallery enclaves were really imaginative. Usually art galleries consist of a collection of huge rooms, where you often get lost trying to circumnavigate among them. In the Guggenheim, the layout was very simple, and often the rooms were quite small nooks. We weren't too fussed about some of the current temporary artists but the permanent display of walk-through steel sculptures was brilliant.

The Guggenheim from across the river

Jeff Koon's "live" puppy outside

A Jeff Koon retrospective was on, with this polished and coated stainless steel sculpture

These were awesome to walk around and through

Because the Guggenheim was actually much smaller than either of us expected, instead of spending perhaps 3-4 hours, we exited soon after 2pm. Feeling peckish we walked away from the expensive eating scene near the museum and instead wandered into a little corner cafe a few blocks away. We were immediately greeted with a smile from the bar girl and a big grin from an old guy. The latter asked if we were English and was interested when we said "Nueva Zelanda" - we always try to say New Zealand in the local language wherever we are - it shows a respect for the locals and seems to be appreciated. We ordered a few tapas and a beer, then received great handshakes and smiles from a couple of old men as they headed out the door, probably off for lunch at home. It gave us quite a buzz to be so welcomed into what seemed very much a 'locals' bar.

Santillana del Mar

We didn't feel tempted to hang around Bilbao. It's a very large city, and clearly has lovely parks and walkways around the river beside the museum. We could have headed off to explore its old centre, but we've done heaps of that elsewhere and prefered to get out of town and back on the road. And so, at the surprisingly early time of 5pm, we arrived at our destination for the night, Santillana del Mar. Our DK book on Spain says it is one of the prettiest villages in Spain, and it's dead right. It is simply stunning. In particular, it is completely mediaeval. The earliest buildings are 9th century but most are 13th to 17th century, and they are consistent. There aren't any visibly new buildings amongst them (at least that we can easily make out), nor poor refurbishments. The streets are remarkably wide and the building frontages consistently embellished with massive stonework, great coats of arms, iron balconies, large overhanging eaves, stained wooden beams and such-like. We really were walking through a mediaeval village. So much so that, after a quick 30 minute reconnoitre, we headed back to our accommodation and booked a second night. For only 35E a night, including breakfast, it seemed an ideal place to spend a catch-up day and to also have time to soak up the atmosphere of the little town for a while longer.

Santillana del Mar is in a lovely rural setting

The streets are so mediaeval

First on the books though was to crank up our little tablet and watch the All Blacks vs Argentina rugby match. Our glass of red wine was much needed to ease the nerves when it looked as though Argentina was going to get the better of us, but thankfully the ABs pulled through in the end. They have much to work on before their next world cup match though.

And so, out to wander around the town, have a glass of wine to fill in the time until the restaurants opened at 8pm (this unusually early time is to cater for the tourists in town) and sat down to a gorgeous meal at 9pm. Neither the waitress nor the barman knew any English so we ended up communicating by our sparse (but improving) Spanish and with Google Translate on our respective cellphones. That helped us to decipher the menu and order some lovely fish dishes. The glass of wine that is always included with the meal duly arrived. It was very nice, so John jumped up to ask the barman what it was. So far so good. It started to get a little tricky when a bottle of said wine then arrived on the table and the barman opened it up for us. We wondered, in blissful ignorance, if this was out of the goodness of the barman's heart, but soon realised that the barman had misinterpreted John's question about the wine and thought we had ordered a bottle. Oh well, It was a nice Verdejo white, and we didn't have a fridge back in our room so we just had to drink it. After enjoying a lovely meal and the excellent wine, plus some fun Google-Translate banter with our waitress, we were then spoilt with some traditional beverages on the house before we got up to leave. The waitress then Google-translated on her phone to say she had really enjoyed serving us. What a hoot. A fun night, and a merry one. To bed to sleep it off.

The only outing planned was to visit a small hermitage on the coast only 5km away, and a nearby town, with the possibility of a walk to an adjoining lighthouse. The hermitage was worth the visit by itself, tucked away until a coastal cliff, right beside the waves. It's clearly on the coastal route for those walking on the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage. So many of the cathedrals and churches we have visited on this trip have been on one or other route for those walking all the way to Santiago de Compostela at the northwest tip of Spain. Pilgrims have been walking these paths for centuries. This hermitage was very small, but peering inside its door was obviously very old, with a wooden stairway and beams for dormitory sleeping. It really gave a feel of being sacred.

The coastal hermitage near Suances

And the lovely church at Santillana

The evening meal was a hassle once again. Many of the restaurants do tapas, but don't seem to do menus, which are always vastly better value. Or perhaps they do, but don't like to advertise it. Either way, places are full of people drinking and snacking right into the night, and we wonder when and if they have a main meal. Anyway, we ended up in a restaurant having a menu del dia, unfortunately rather spoilt by a table of Americans. They appeared to be a group of loose friends, and the conversation was both exceptionally loud, and exceptionally inane. One of the pleasures of living in a non-English speaking country is that you can easily ignore conversations around you. not so this time. It was a huge relief when they finally got up and left.