Our next two port stops over three days were on that flat northern coast of Spain along the Bay of Biscay.
In Bilbao we had selected a walking tour that included a stroll around the old city centre and a taste of Spanish pintxos, the Basque version of tapas.
The ship was docked in the port town of Getxo, which evolved from a small fishing community to a residential area for the rich from Bilbao during the 1800s. Before driving into Bilbao, we had a brief drive through the town to visit the very interesting Vizcaya Bridge.
The capsule is actually quite large and carries both people and cars across the Nervion River. We spent a few minutes here before climbing back into the bus for our ride into Bilbao. Apparently there has only been a service interruption once since it opened, at that was for four years during the Spanish Civil War when the top was bombed and destroyed. The bridge is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
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| The town on the other side |
After a shuttle bus ride of about 25 minutes from Getxo, we were dropped off at the oldest part of the city, just along the Nervion River from the world famous Guggenheim Museum.
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| Our first view of the museum as we crossed a bridge to the city centre |
The Guggenheim Museum can be credited entirely with reviving the economy of Bilbao. With de-industrialization in the 1980s due to the loss of the shipbuilding industry in Bilbao, the city was facing high unemployment and economic hardship. Someone came up with the idea of building a museum and the Basque authorities approached the Guggenheim Foundation in New York with the plan to fund a world-class art museum. The rest, as they say, is history. The building was designed by Frank Gehry, whose team used the aerospace designing system CATIA to engineer the titanium-wrapped structure.
The museum is one of the biggest tourist draws to Bilbao, although our guide and some others said that the actual building is more impressive than the art collections inside. Many of our fellow guests made a point of going to the museum anyway and enjoyed it nonetheless.
Views through the bus window from the other side of the river as we drove by:
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There is a large sitting dog 'mascot' of the museum in the front courtyard. It is in fact another art installation, named 'Puppy', from the American artist Jeff Koons. It is a huge Highland Terrier that is covered in the flowers of each season.
We left the bus and started on our stroll through old Bilbao, where our local guide gave us a comprehensive history lesson on the city and specifically the central area where we were. Bilbao was founded in 1300 as a port town and over 300 years became an industrial hub for the Basque region, first through trade and then with steel mills and shipbuilding as major industries in from the 1800s until the 1980s.
The area we were visiting is known as Casco Viejo, the medieval quarter. The streets are narrow and all of the residental apartments have small balconies, most covered with houseplants. The main level shops and restaurants were all quite busy, but then it was Sunday afternoon when we were there, and people were meeting up at the bars and coffee shops.
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| Buildings just off the Theatre Square. In 1983 the Nervion River flooded so that the ground floors of all the buildings here were under water! |
The Town Square, Plaza Nueva, was completed in 1851 and is a central hub for Bilbao residents. Along with shops, restaurants and bars under the colonnade, there is a Basque civic building on one side. The Royal Academy of the Basque Language occupies part of another side; the language was on the brink of extinction because it was not allowed when the area was initially annexed to Spain. More recently its cultural significance has made a resurgence and people are being encouraged to learn and speak it again.
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| The Sunday afternoon crowd meeting at one of the bars |
There are also lots of residential apartments in the buildings around the Plaza Nueva.
We continued our walk through Casco Viejo and finally reached our pintxos destination - La Palma, a restaurant near the Theatre Square where we began our walking tour.
Along with a glass of beer or Basque wine, we were all given a small plate of pintxos: a small skewer with olives and anchovy on bread, a little sandwich with tuna salad and, in the back on this photo, Spanish tortilla. This specialty is made with sliced potatoes cooked slowly in oil with beaten egg poured over and cooked until the egg is just set. It didn't look like a lot, but it filled us up nicely.
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| The Bar and sandwich counter at the restaurant |
We had some free time to wander around after our pintxos break, and it was a good thing that the shops were closed. A couple of the ladies we sat with found a clothing store nearby that had some beautiful things in it - I might even have been tempted - but they might not have had time to come back the next morning before the ship left. Instead, we decided we had to try the other traditional dish from the area - Basque cheesecake! Also near the restaurant was a cheesecake shop called 'Bassk' and we couldn't resist getting a piece to take out.
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| One piece of cake and two forks, enjoyed on the sidewalk. |
Once we were ready to go back to the ship, things began to fall apart. Our bus didn't appear at the expected time. Fortunately our local guide was the owner of the guiding company and she called him to see where he was....It turned out that he didn't check with the office to see if he was responsible for picking us up and was nowhere near downtown. (Uh, huh. And it was Sunday afternoon.....) Our guide called the bus company which was also running the shuttle service back to the port, and arranged for the next shuttle bus to pick us up too. Crisis averted, but two couples decided they couldn't wait and looked for an Uber to get them back. We didn't see them again to find out who returned first, but our wait was long enough that our guide treated us all to gelato at her favourite creamery around the corner. That was a little chaotic, so no photo. Everyone got safely back to the ship about an hour later than our original time.
We left Bilbao at noon the next day and sailed the Bay of Biscay toward A Coruña. Since I'm not doing a food post for this blog - a lot of the same things as in the previous couple of cruises for this year, so no sense repeating myself - we decided to have lunch at Beefbar while we sailed out.
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| Larry decided to have the fried chicken and fries (as this is Beefbar, the chicken was fried in beef tallow) |
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| I had the deconstructed Caesar Salad, followed by sea bass that I forgot to photograph. It was still delicious! |
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| A Mediterranean style windmill on a nearby cliff. |
At A Coruña, we decided to go to the medieval town of Betanzos. This is a typical old town of the region of Galicia and is one of the best preserved. The town was founded in 1219 as an agricultural community as it is in a fertile valley not far from the Atlantic Ocean.
Before heading out of A Coruña, we had a little sightseeing tour that led us to the Tower of Hercules, the oldest working Roman lighthouse in the world. The lighthouse was built in the 1st or 2nd Century AD during the Roman Empire. It is 55 metres high, but the top 21 metres were added during a renovation in the 1700s. The tower is now narrower than the original because the spiral ramp around the
outside was removed. You can see the remnants of this ramp winding around in between the windows. The original central core was protected intact by the naval engineer in charge, and as part of awarding the Tower of Hercules World Heritage Site status, UNESCO called the restoration 'exemplary'.
We only had enough time to walk around and take a couple of photos. In order to climb up to the top you need tickets, and probably a certain amount of time. Apparently there are about 230 steps on a steep internal spiral staircase.
We then left for Betanzos where we found a surprisingly quiet small town. In fact we wondered if anyone was even there - but then it was only about 11:00 in the morning. We had an opportunity to wander through some of the narrow streets and look at the interesting architecture. In Galicia most of the buildings have glass-covered balconies known as galerias which were used more for preserving the heat inside the home in winter. Think of them as mini sunrooms.
In this little corner is one of the oldest and best bakeries in the area. Judging by the vans going in and out it was probably the busiest place in town, too.
There is a bi-annual art festival known as Balconadas that was also happening while we were there. Canvases painted by international artists are hung from the balconies in the old town, turning it into an open-air museum.
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| A couple of paintings hanging on the balconies |
For such a small town, there are three large churches within the centre. One of the reasons for this is that it is a rest stop on the 'English Way' or the 'Way of Saint James', one of the pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela, which is about 60 kilometres away.
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| The Church of St. James was built in the 15th Century |
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| The local crocheters had left a display outside of St. James Church. Cute!! |
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| Some of the very steep roads in town. |
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| This one has a portal of the original town wall at the bottom. |
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| This is the monastery attached to the Church of St. Francis, dating from 1387 |
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| St. Francis Church |
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| A small square waiting for afternoon customers. More paintings hanging above. |
Things did start to get busier around noon, and by the time we left, a number of the restaurants and bars had people sitting at their outdoor patios.
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| Diana the Huntress fountain in the central square |
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| It was a warm day and we had a little time, so Larry had a local beer in a small tavern. |
Looking at Betanzos, you would wonder why it was there at all. It is a service and administrative hub for the local area, and also has a thriving food tourism industry, which includes its own version of Tortilla de Betanzos, which is a little different from the one we had in Bilbao. As it is in a very fertile valley, it also has a wine industry. The local area is a distinct classified wine region of Spain. While Larry enjoyed his beer, I tried a glass of the local white Albarin, which was quite light and refreshing.
That was another lovely day in an interesting part of the world we hadn't visited before. Our ship wasn't leaving A Coruña until 5:00 the following morning, as we had a sea day before the Solar Eclipse in the evening. Even if we'd wanted to leave the ship, I wouldn't have tried. A Coruña was also on the path of totality, and lots of people were already arriving to experience it. It was probably quite busy everywhere. So we stayed on board and relaxed, gearing up for the eclipse!
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