Bilbao Spain

In between our Sits in Hereford, England and Poitou-Charentes, France, we had a couple of days open so we chose to visit Bilbao on the northern coast of Spain. Barb had read about Leon Spain and bars that served complimentary pinxtos, pronounced pink-saws, served free at bars when buying a glass of wine. Pinxtos are similar to tapas and popular in northern Spain. Various toppings are usually served on top of a piece of bread with a toothpick to keep it all together. Our dear friend Bob G. taught us how to have “app and go’s” (going from place to place and sharing appetizers) when snacking and drinking in Asheville so we knew it was a fun style of eating allowing us to try different foods. Also, neither of us ever thought we would be able to travel to Spain so we found a cheap flight and off we went to Bilbao for two and a half days.


We took a night flight into Bilbao and enjoyed a cab to our hotel down curvy mountainous highway roads to the flatland of Bilbao. The lights of the city looked very appealing. Our hotel was in the heart of Old Town but it was late so we unpacked our stuff and thought about what we might see in the morning.

As we exited our hotel in the morning we walked into beautiful old town! There was a nice energy from the many people walking on the pedestrian cobblestone walkway. To the left was a road with several buses and I saw train tracks I later learned were for the tram taking people around the city. We opted to walk toward the courtyard admiring the tall buildings on both sides of the walkway. We passed a couple of side streets with gorgeous old buildings with seating and canopies in front of some of them. We saw an opening a short distance from us and in a few minutes reached an open courtyard with many seats around small tables with huge umbrellas advertising the name of a restaurant directly in front of the seating areas.

Pintxos

We went into the closest restaurant, Bizuet. It was a narrow store with a row of tables and a counter filled with plates of pintxos, tapas, on two tiers with a section of small plates stacked with a spoon and a packet of sugar. There were a half dozen people seated at the counter and a few others scattered in the remaining seats. The man behind the counter was very busy working the cash register and setting fresh pinxtos in front of the customers and removing empty plates and coffee cups.


I perused the selection, cold fish omelette on French bread, fried octopus ball on top of salmon and French bread, ham and cheese on French bread and many others some with creams, cheeses, meats, fruit, you name it, both sweet and savory. I requested “Dos cafes y un con leche.”, perhaps a grammatical nightmare but understood and probably appreciated. The second worker behind the bar looked at me briefly then quickly turned to the coffee machine and began the process. After getting the café started he briefly explained he would bring them to me.


I went outside where Barb was seated at one of the small tables with an empty chair waiting for me. I explained the food situation and suggested we, I, select a couple and be ready for any type of food because it was difficult to discern what made up all the choices. She said she would trust my choices and anything would be ok to try.

We saw the many tiny terraces off the apartments above the stores and thought how nice it would be to get an AirBnB there and have coffee looking onto the scene we were in. Barb said she felt she was on a movie set. The town took her breath away. It was during that first encounter Barb declared she was in love with Bilbao. Oh, I almost forgot. Directly behind the seating area is the Santiago Cathedral, from the 14^th-15^th century.


Within moments our coffee arrived and we both sat talking, drinking delicious coffee and watching the many people flowing by between us and the store fronts. There were young people arm in arm, old couples, families, people being helped in wheel chairs, and dogs all to the backdrop of constant chatter, mostly non-intelligible words. An old man added to the entertainment of people watching by playing an accordion of pop tunes singing in Spanish. All of the tables eventually filled and the people ate pinxtos, drank beer or wine and, sometimes, non-alcoholic beverages, usually the children. It was a great people watching venue.


I eventually went back into the Bizuet and selected a couple of pinxtos, octopus and cheese, ham sandwich and the cold fish omelette. Our waiter brought them out with another round of cafes and we thoroughly enjoyed them.

Old town appeared to be built around the court we sat in with streets radiating to a main road. There were side streets down as you walked out toward the main road surrounding the center of Old Town some with smaller courtyards set up similarly to where we were. We walked around feeling safe with the many people out and about.

We stopped back at our lunch stop for some wine and more food when closing time, 10p, sneaking up on us. We paid our bill and headed happily to our hotel.

Guggenheim Museum

On our second day in Bilbao we decided to walk the mile to see the Guggenheim museum of modern and contemporary art. It was commissioned by the king of Spain to be built on the decrepit area of the port of Bilbao to bring the area back to its prior stature. The pre-opening of the museum was attended by over 5,000 people and the museum architecture being praised as one of the premier buildings of our time. We wanted a destination to see more of the city.

As we walked, we noticed the buildings were a seemingly well thought out combination of old and new all blending into a picturesque city. We ventured out during the heat of the day so we tried to navigate by traveling, as much as possible, in the shade between the buildings. I noticed the temperatures ranged from 75 to 92 degrees along our route with the difference being the shade. There was light traffic and some people on the streets but we both felt safe and enjoyed the beauty of the city. The restaurants and bars were all inviting and we stopped a few times to relax and enjoy a drink and all were welcoming. There were green spaces with benches and shade and the terrain was level.

It was a stark comparison between a “decrepit port area” and its appearance today, clean, vibrant with buses and a tram stopping frequently by the museum. The museum is fantastic and like nothing I have ever seen and striking difference from any of the architecture, modern and old, in the rest of the city. The bridge that spans the Nervion river appeared to have a modern and whimsical feel complimenting the museum.

We admired the museum from the outside before making our way back to Old Town. We didn’t take the same route home because Barb’s internal compass knows where we have to go so we make decisions on a street by street basis. Our return trip was as enjoyable and impressive as the first half.







Bilbao is a city of 350K with a heavy flow of tourists. We would love to go back and enjoy more of the city or perhaps find a smaller city in Spain offering a smaller, more local flavor. Spain is definitely on our radar to visit again!

Cheers!
John

If you would like to see more of Barb's photos of Bilbao, just CLICK HERE

What We’ve Done, What We’ve Learned

While the overarching idea, rent our home in the states and stay rent free traveling Europe and elsewhere by Pet Sitting for a year was very appealing and financially sound, we still had to overcome some obstacles - physically moving all of our belongings from place to place, coordinating schedules for Sits while identifying and organizing the different modes of transportation, balancing our budget and finally, enjoying the experiences of our lives.

Etta in France

A critical component for us to be able to travel six months in Europe is Pet Sitting. Pet or House Sitting is when homeowners, going on holiday (vacation) or a business trip for days or weeks, open their home, rent free, in exchange for feeding and attending to their pet’s needs. So, for feeding and playing with animals, we live, temporarily, in homes located in towns and cities throughout Europe meeting some wonderful people and experience things we never thought we would. Since the animals are not on life support requiring 24/7 care and we are not trained veterinarians, we are able to venture out in the area for hours at a time while our furry friends sleep, oblivious to our brief absence. Fantastic! Although the Sits with our new furry friends has been rewarding and memorable, the purpose of our trip was to experience people, places and things.

Since we are in our 50’s, with me closer to 60, moving our 40 pounds of luggage between the six Sits (so far) and four additional stops, almost always via multiple transportation modes in three months has been challenging. Luckily, Barb is a determined person and devoted partner and does her fair share of the physical moving and I have been able to provide any extra muscle when needed. We learned to shift as much weight to our backpacks for the ground transportation since there is no size restrictions and distribute it into our handbags when flying. This has helped tremendously. We realized the difficulty of moving our luggage as we made our way to our first hotel in London but the impetus for change happened boarding our plane on Flybe airlines. I still recall the feeling of angst as I entered our plane’s fuselage, each with our 20 pound backpacks and seeing the overhead not much bigger than a bread box realizing they would never fit. During our next Sit we worked on a solution. Just recently we received our collapsible handcart that should help even more.

The coordination of the dozen or so Sits we will probably need for the six months in Europe have been handled perfectly by Barb. She applies for Sits, always mindful of available time slots in our schedule, arranges interviews and makes sure I look somewhat presentable when we have a Skype call. As far as the travel arrangements, Barb must have travel planning in her DNA or blood because she has always done that in our relationship and has been fantastic on this Adventure. I’ve watched her sit in front of our laptop with her eyes glazing, toggling between many different screens for schedules for trains, buses, airlines, hotels and their cancellation policies, Google maps for walking distances from terminal to terminal to hotel, and other websites. It’s too much for me to comprehend and since she enjoys it and skilled my input would just muddle things.

We did learn a valuable lesson on over committing to our hosts. Between our second and third Sit we had to leave at 3:30AM in Ward End, England to meet our third host in Edinburgh, Scotland by noon. We took a taxi to the airport, flew to Edinburgh, caught a tram into the city to get the keys for our AirBnB, then a taxi to meet our host and finally an Uber to our AirBnB. That was a grind but we did it and since then we make realistic commitments with adequate time between Sits.




After three months of traveling we are reasonably satisfied with our expenses relative to our budget. We still need to be aware of our budgetary constraints but also want to enjoy these experiences. Since we travel to locations based on the Sits we have been to places we never heard of so we never considered them as a place we would want to go. Our third Sit, Edinburgh Scotland, was such a place. After reading a travel book and doing a little internet research the city size was adequate, it had mass transportation, we could easily walk to places and their temperatures would be a high of 75 degrees. We stayed there for one month and saw a good portion of the city and it far exceeded our expectations and we would love to return. Another time we had four days before our Munich Sit so we selected Gdansk Poland because it was exotic, for us, and the flight was reasonable. Our research indicated the temperatures and cost of living was reasonable. Since it has a population of 450K we knew there would be activities we enjoy. We loved it! We could just as easily traveled to popular locations and had fun but I can’t imagine they would be more memorable than Gdansk. We knew the budget could be doomed by rationalizing expensive travel and hotels to popular but out of the way places by the phrase, “We should spend the money. We deserve it and this is a once in a lifetime opportunity!”

Pintxos 

I think people, friends, bloggers, writers, recommend places because they enjoyed them, of course, but they probably don’t have the same expectations of places or the same interest as us. Those suggestions are a good place to start but a decision should only be made after some introspection and research. Also, books or the internet should be taken as generally accurate. For instance, Barb found a blog that described a city in northern Spain having a style of eating and drinking that appealed to us, bars giving a free tapas with the purchase of a glass of wine. We enjoy eating small plates of food, going to bars and drinking wine or beer so we planned a trip to Bilbao, Spain. Well, the city was fantastic and we loved it but we didn’t get any free tapas. My point is if we had expected free food we would have been disappointed. We did expect bars to serve small plates and they did and we thoroughly enjoyed our meals and experience.



Sometimes we like to take the “On-Off Tours” of cities. It’s a way to see some of the city and identify sections that we would like to see. We took one of those tours in Munich Germany with the plan to stay on the bus for a complete route identifying stops we would like to go back to on the second time around route. I used the map provided to make note of interesting places. While listening to the guide and seeing the areas I filled the map with notes and asterisks on stops that were places we think would be worth going to. So, we finished the route and decided to go for lunch and discuss what we saw. There were several places on my map I made notes about and two with asterisks. As we read the tour bus brochure we realized we paid for the three different tours so we agreed to try one more tour after lunch. By the time we approached our last stop on that second tour I had made notes on five stops with asterisks next to three. Then we saw the Marienplatz, looked at each other and agreed this is the place to go. Well, two weeks in Munich and we went back to the Marienplatz every time we took the train into the city. Barb and I had a great time in all of our visits to the city but we can’t say we saw anything but one small section. I think most people judge their experiences on cities they visit based on what they have done, makes sense. So, if I tell a person Munich is a great city and we had fun I am actually describing one small section. The converse could also be true if a person tells us a city isn’t worth seeing. My point is if you adhere to limited guidelines based on your desires and a city meets them, it’s probably a place to explore.

I think seeing most of the world class and popular cities would be a great experience but I question if it is worth spending the extra money when you can go to a place you may never have heard of for far less and have a comparable or more memorable experience. Also, cities are not monolithic and are made up of several or many sections each possibly providing different experiences so unless your wants and needs match the personality of the person doing the recommending, you should do you own research and decide if you want to visit.

A minor point and possibly contradictory, is when you are considering saving a euro or two by taking a sleeper train through Madrid, Spain to a destination to avoid a hotel cost. We had that very situation and quickly decided to pay the additional euros for the hotel in Madrid even though we would only be there for part of day. Since we would be going through Madrid anyways why would we not want to see Madrid! This decision to spend the additional money in a city we didn’t research as opposed to sleeping on a train through a world class city was a wise one. (Note: That trip planned through Madrid fell through when we landed a Sit in Amsterdam Netherlands!)

Cheers!
John


Note from Barb: John expressed really well the thought process of how we have been traveling these last 3 months, our expectations, challenges and logistics of meeting every Sit. I am truly lucky to have such a wonderful partner to share this journey with. It can be stressful at times and it was a LOT of work just getting to the point of boarding the plane to Europe but we have said over and over and over again, it was worth it. We have met incredible people which we hope to stay in touch with and maybe host at our home, visited places I never dreamed of and have collected so many wonderful memories.