The Basque Land! (San Sebastian and Bilbao)

So for all of you Anchodoguys who are, I'm sure, avidly reading every blog entry that I post, I present to you the wonderful experiences that I have had in San Sebastian and Bilbao thus far!

The gist of this post is my declaration that I either want to a) become a millionaire and own a beautiful house on the waterfront of San Sebastian or b) that I want to live here for an extended period of time in my later years (heck, why not now? Mom and Dad, permission please? haha). But seriously. The land here is beautiful. I know I've used that word a fair amount in this blog, but I mean utterly picturesqe...breathtaking, really.

The plane first touched down in Bilbao (at an airport designed by the famous Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, no less!) and as we were about to hit the landing pad, I look out the window to see a herd of sheep just hanging out on the green hill nextdoor. It totally reminded me of you, Eddie. We then went straight to San Sebastian, to this sculpture garden by this artist Chilleda who is apparently a famous Basque artist/architect/sculpture artist. The weather was supposed to be chilly with potential rain, but it was a fantastically sunny day with clear blue skies. It was almost to the point where I needed sunscreen!



For lunch we were able to go to a cooking school and watch a demonstration on how to make four pintxos (tapas, but of the Basque variety), and then we were fed and served by the students of the cooking school. We had some fantastic food. I haven't eaten that well in so long! I'll post some pictures up of the food we ate. Be prepared to salivate.

We then took a vernacular to the top of this mountain and were able to see a panoramic view of San Sebastian and the coast...It was so much fun being in a region that has much more significance because of my family's origin. I can't explain how ridiculous it is that every single picture that I take of this place is beautiful. This is quite possibly my favorite place in the world....We walked along the water and then got back on the bus to take a bus tour of the Old City.

We then drove to Bilbao and had dinner at the hotel. They served us a three course meal starting with eggplant parmesan, steak and fries, and then tiramisu, which was great, but it would have been nice to have some authentic Basque food. The Rio de Bilbao (the name of the River that runs through Bilbao) is gorgeous. It is how I would picture Venice to be. We were pretty tired so we ended up going to bed not too much after (remember that we eat dinner later here, I swear I have a social life, haha).



This morning we woke up and had a bus tour of Bilbao. We went up to a lookout point to get another panoramic view, which was pretty amazing though it was incredibly windy so it was a little hard to get a nice photo, haha. Today was altogether a fantastic day, actually. We had a lot of free time, so we walked around Casco Viejo (Old Town) and got some delicious pintxos at this place crowded with a lot of locals, we experienced a protest regarding the retirement age, and we able to buy some souvenirs such as a beret (legitimately basque!), a very nice, intricate ring, a present for my mother, a basque flag, and some postcards.



We then went to the Guggenheim!! The Guggenheim in Bilbao was designed by Frank Gehry and it is quite possibly the coolest thing I've ever seen (it kind of reminds me of the EMP in Seattle). The museum was fabulous and to be able to have actually gone after learning so much about art and the significance of the Guggenheim and the amount of Pop Art and modern art that they have, it was really really really cool! I was able to identify works the artists of works of art (like Jim Dine's Venus de Milo's), works by Robert Rauschenberg, Serra, Gauguin, Picasso and we were even able to observe a famous modern artist in action. We walked into this room with a little lookout point in the center where we were expected to look down. When we did, we saw the artist Anish Kapoor sculpting a giant wheel of red wax, he was on his hands and knees kneeding this wax and cutting it into smaller pieces. He was wearing all white and his clothes were covered with what looked like blood from the dye. It was a very interesting thing to see, and it was almost like performance art. But to be able to see the artist in person was very, very awesome.



Anyway, now we've returned to the hotel and are watching a news report about the 8.8 earthquake in Chile and the potential tsunami thats headed for the East Asian countries and Hawaii?? Good grief.....

Anyway, I'm here for one more full day and arrive back in Barcelona around 9:40 tomorrow night, so I will update this blog entry as I go.

To come:
Two friends are visiting me next week!! They're both studying abroad in Paris and they're visiting me during their time off (though at different times of the week). The weekend after next I'm going to be going to Costa Brava, and then my parents will be in town!!!