October 2
Fueled by a borderline toxic combination of sugar and caffeine, I powered through Bilbao today with the confidence of someone who knows how to get his car going in reverse. That and my almost flawless Spanish, which hit a tiny snag this evening when the bartender asked me if I would be eating my tapas outside (which costs slightly more) and I thought he was asking me what kind of wine I wanted. The conversation went something like this:

Him: "Will you be eating these outside or inside?"
Me: "It doesn't matter to me, whichever one you like the best."

But we eventually sorted things out, resulting in his decision not to have me thrown out of the place.

Anyway, Bilbao is a city that seems, for every single municipal project, to think "well, we're going to have to design something anyway, let's just get an artsy designer to do it for us." As a result, the walk/don't walk signs have animations of stick figures walking, the bridges are more complicated then they have to be, colorful and beautiful, the buses are bright red and are called "Bilbobus," and so on.

But the crown jewel of all this artsiness is of course the Guggenheim, which is astounding. First of all, how much money does Peggy Guggenheim have? This museum is literally built out of materials that didn't exist until Frank Gehry decided that they had to be invented to give physical shape to his dream. But putting aside the banalities of how this thing got built, it is really amazing. I recommend a visit someday.

                                            

Who thinks up a building like this? Frank says that he traveled out here to look at the site and then started drawing on a piece of paper (of course not thinking consciously of design, per se, but rather just letting his emotions guide the pen) and came up with this.

The largest room in the museum (and possibly the largest room ever, period) has an installation of a sculpture that you can get lost in. This is a scale model.

This is the real thing.

You say "Why a thirty-foot dog made out of flowers?" Bilbao says "Why not a thirty-foot dog made out of flowers?"

Tomorrow, I say "Arrivederci" to Balboa and head out to the mountains for the last separately-identifiable adventure of this trip.

One last thing. Do you have any idea how expensive toothpaste is here? If you choose to visit, I recommend you bring an extra tube.