I love a good ‘city-break’. We have been fortunate enough to have enjoyed many over the years. Some of the best city-breaks have been in the smaller cities of Europe rather than the largest; I like their size and the fact that one can see most of the city by just walking about; my aging legs still allow me to do that. Our latest city visit was to Bilbao in the Basque area of northern Spain and it was a very successful trip.
The logistics worked (thank goodness the threatened French air-traffic controllers strike was called off at the last moment), the hotel was comfortable, the weather was lovely and Bilbao was interesting and studded with very good bars, cafes and sights to see. Bilbao is on the Ria de Bilbao just downstream of the confluence of the rivers Nervion and Ibaizabal and the bridges across it and the steep sides of the valley it cuts through, provide a number of vantage points for lovely views of the city.
It seemed to me that the centre of city has three main elements: the Old Town, the 19th century planned grid structure of streets to the west and, a little further downstream, the modern restorations of old port areas (that continue all the way down to the still thriving port area on the coast). We spent much of our time in the Old Town but our modern hotel was amongst the grid like streets nearby and was conveniently quiet in addition to being centrally located.
A key factor in choosing to visit Bilbao was our desire to see the Guggenheim Museum which is perhaps the centrepiece of the city and much visited by tourists from all over the world. It is indeed a remarkable building and I’ll cover our visit to it, and to the nearby Fine Arts Museum, in a separate post. There was much else to see and do and just walking around in the sunshine helped us absorb the feel of the city and the underlying strength of local pride in the Basque/Biscay culture. Our visit coincided with Spain’s National Day and we saw a couple of noisy street celebrations.
Part of that Basque (and Spanish) culture is the sociability of the people and their propensity to sit in bars and chat. There are hundreds of bars but, in the Old Town especially, it was difficult to find an outside seat because they were all so popular. The only workable strategy to getting a seat was often to order a drink and stand for a while until a table was vacated. Many were doing that but we lacked the patience and generally kept walking until we found a couple of adjacent seats by chance (or gave up!)
We did have some good suggestions for cafes and bars to try from Middle Son’s (MS’s) fiancée and we managed most of them. The best we experienced were Baster near the Cathedral and Ekain in the main square, Plaza Nueva. Both had excellent pintxos which are little snacks that bars sell to help prolong the bar-side drinking and conversations.
Jane also found two incredibly good breakfast places. Cafe Originale was a typical Jane choice of minimal décor, clean lines and excellent granola and yogurt (though I chose a filling savoury mix). .
Cokooncafe was something else! More than half the indoor space was taken up by seven chefs preparing immaculate looking breakfasts. Watching the preparation was almost as good as eating the food and it reminded me of the brilliant TV drama series The Bear – especially Series 3 where the focus is on learning and delivering on being a top-rated restaurant. The food, in truth, was a little too sweet to be an ideal breakfast but it was incredible experience. We ‘did’ both Café Originale and Cokooncafe twice and loved them but I will remember Cokooncafe especially for a very long time.
After going up the Artxanda Funicular to the views across the city from Artxanda Park, we ate tortilla at the apparently famous but remarkably unassuming Bilba (another of the MS fiancée recommendations which paid off). After this, the big breakfasts and the variety of pintxos, we didn’t feel much like a restaurant dinner in the evenings. Liquid dinners largely sufficed and I found the local ‘brown’ beers very satisfactory.
I went off twice on my own to explore Bibao. I am so pleased that I went to the Itsasmuseum (Maritime Museum). This provided a well laid out (with English translations) exhibition of the history of Bilbao from the point of view of its seafaring past, its port management and the Basque fishing industry. I loved the antique maps on show. They reminded me of the trips my Dad and I made in my youth to shops selling such maps.
The old maps were a key part of the museum’s attempt to illustrate the progression of the growth of Bilbao in fits and starts from medieval times. The exhibits charted the industrial revolution, the 20th century industrial decline, the massive floods (in 1983), separatist and joblessness riots, and the recent emergence of renewable industries and tourism.
Bilbao is actually many miles inland from the coast and the estuary that joins it to the Bay of Biscay has had to be completely re-engineered to enable sea trade and, ultimately, the rapid 19th century development of the city. The previously huge mining, metal and ship building industry has now almost gone but the port out near the coast is busy and the city itself is a hive of activity.
The transformations Bilbao has been through were underlined by an exhibit by Esther Pizarro called ‘Skin of Light’. It was a combination of a model of the city and a video. The model was lit in different colours as the video of the recent history of Bilbao played out. I confess to being quite moved by the hopefulness the work exuded. The whole visit to the museum was well worthwhile and it helped create a context for what I saw in the Bilbao streets.
On another excursion to the south of the Old Town, I encountered grittier streets. Parque Miribilla offered some good views north to the city centre and the walk along the river was interesting. Then, in the midst of some mid-rise social housing, I found a remnant from Bilbao’s industrial past; an old furnace attached to a mine that produced iron, that had been restored and surrounded by modern artworks. Seeing the furnace off the beaten track was a nice surprise before a stroll back into the city past sunset-bathed San Anton Church and to another crowded riverside bar.
One other MS fiancée recommendation was to take a break from the city to visit Mundaka just over an hour out of the city by train or bus and on the north east coast. The weather was again sunny and warm and it was a perfect adjunct to walking the streets of Bilbao. The town is on another estuary with a sand bank which apparently creates excellent surfing conditions.
We saw plenty of surfers and paddleboarders amid the superb views across the estuary. We walked to the little fisherman’s church to look across the Bay of Biscay and then found a seat in an (inevitably) packed bar to snack and drink more strong beer. Visiting Mundaka was a great trip out for a morning and a chance to see a pretty, old coastal resort and semi-rural and rural Basque country on the way.
Bilbao proved to be a good choice for a very enjoyable city-break. I look forward to the next one.
My Retirement Journey 