Vitoria and Bilbao

I took the bus from Estella to Vitoria, and Blanca picked me up at the bus station. She grew up in Vitoria, and worked there, so she knows the city well.

Vitoria was a walled city built on a hill. It is the government center for Avala, part of the Basque autonomous region. 

We walked around the city center extensively. We started with a hard hat tour of the Cathedral, which has been under reconstruction for many years. It was not built in the best way to start with, and modifications did not help. Columns are  leaning, arches are obviously distorted, and this is after a lot of work. We started in the basement, and got as high as the upper walkway, well above the floor of the church. 

Vitoria is known as a green city, because of its many parks; we had lunch in one of the parks. 

We visited the modern art museum, but were not too impressed. They did have a Richard Serra work outside. 

We had dinner with her sister at her house in Elosu, a village of 100 people and 800 cows. It was pleasantly rural, near a lake. 

On Wednesday we headed for Bilbao, and the Guggenheim.  This involved a steep and twisty mountain road. 

The Guggenheim building was a Geary design, like the Denver art museum. 

The amazing thing was a huge hall, with a series of large works by Richard Serra. We could walk inside the pieces, and understand the pieces from the inside out. There was a lengthy explanatory video. I am not sure that I have ever seen any modern artworks which were as impressive. 

After that we headed for the Vizcaya transporter bridge, a UNESCO world heritage site, and one of only a handful of these bridges ever built. We walked across the top, and rode back in the car, suspended by cables from a carriage above. Blanca had ridden the bridge many times, but had not been on the overhead walkway, which was relatively new. My friend Mike is a big fan of these bridges, but had not ridden this one. ;-)