Bilbao

Catching up on past events, from March 5-8th we were in Bilbao with Carlotta. While our primary draw to the city was the Guggenheim, we fell in love with the Basque culture as well as the incredible culinary scene across Basque Country.

The Guggenheim Bilbao was designed by Frank Gehry and first opened in 1997. While we initially were somewhat suspicious of what to expect, we both were in awe of the building. Gehry has done a great job of creating a curvaceous, flowing structure that interacts with the city around it, despite the fact that the materials used for the building (primarily glass and titanium) do not reflect the surrounding materials. It's hard to really capture the Guggenheim Bilbao in a photograph and we spent our first 30 minutes walking around the outside of the museum before entering.

The Guggenheim Bilbao has a small permanent collection, which largely consists of some large sculptures / installations by (among others), Richard Serra and Jeff Koons (above). The majority of the space at the Guggenheim Bilbao is devoted to revolving exhibitions. Fortunately/unfortunately, we visited when the Museum was featuring an exhibition on Takashi Murakami, who is loosely termed an artist and is better described as a businessman or a commercial designer. Murakami is well known for the world of characters he designed, as well as for his collaboration with Louis Vuitton on several very successful lines of handbags. It was definitely interesting to see the Murakami exhibit and learn more about his style and history; however, it was also a bit disappointing that there wasn't something more interesting on display.

The other big highlight of Bilbao was the incredible food. The Basque region is famous for its Pintxos, small bite-sized tapas that are mainly served cold on pieces of bread. The photo above is the typical scene that greets you in any Basque bar. It is always a tough choice what to order and while at first it is strange to see everything on display, after eating at a few Pintxo bars, you get used to it quickly.

These three delicious pintxos include a grilled mushroom (far right), a round of goat cheese with strawberry compote (left) and a piece of foie gras between two home-made potato chips (back). Needless to say, all three were delicious).

We would definitely recommend a visit to Bilbao; however, our favourite part of Basque Country was San Sebastian, which we visited immediately following Bilbao (post to come). Additional photos from Bilbao are available here.