Bilbao (1/27/07)

Ahh! Sunny…er Snowy Spain? I guess I should have seen this coming, but that requires thinking ahead and planning and all of that other boring stuff. As it is we left JFK at least an hour and a half late (on the least comfortable international plane I ever experienced… unless you count that one RyanAir trip where they were literally trying to sell a seatbelt to you, this may be a personal opinion but if someone is trying to sell me a seatbelt, I figure I am screwed enough that in the end whether or not I actually purchase will not matter as we die in a fiery crash because the pilot spilt his scotch and soda… but enough digressing for one day.

The airport in Madrid is really quite nice, you know the one done by one of those british guys… Richard Rogers…or that other guy I can’t think of…you know the famous one…anyway the damn thing was huge., and of course we missed our initial flight because of the JFK disaster. So now we are to get on another flight to Bilbao at the 6th gate….welll make that the 70th gate (so nice of them to switch the gate 5mins before we started boarding… ah Spain I missed you so).

Another lovely airport, this time done by Santiago Calatrava… damn its snowy here in Bilbao too! Once in the city we find out that our “hostel” is actually a swanky “high-tech hotel” in the major plaza of Petite Palacio Arana, a mere 200m from the train station…score! While we waited on our room we explored this side of the river. It is just as I have remembered it., a lovely maze of streets locked away from the automobile and filled with wandering people, even during siesta.

Once back to the hotel we of course pass out for a few hours…oops. Once awake we explored the commercial side of the river and wandered along the river towards the Guggenheim and the Calatrava bridge… Jeanne-Marie does not care for the museum’s exterior, but did like the spider sculpture and the cool playground next to it. I am inclined to agree… but hey at least it makes more sense here than the Disney in L.A.

Now we prepare to go out for dinner. I have been telling Jeannie that in Spain people do not eat until around 10 at the earliest. She started to not believe me as we were walking back to the area around the hotel and all the shops were closing. Thankfully I was correct (for the first time ever it seems) and we found a lovely little Chinese… yes Chinese restaurant not afar from our hotel. I did nearly kill myself by choking on the flowers they put in my damn tea…. I mean yes it was pretty and I am sure it is more authentic… but I was not expecting dandy lions in my ginsing tea but hey it was still darn tasty.

Currently we are on our train to Madrid… well kinda. Since I wasn’t thinking we are traveling on Saturday and so we must go through Palencia first, no big deal but now we are stuck as something seems to be blocking the tracks a little up ahead… so this should be fun Hopefully we do not sleep on the train, or maybe we can at least get to Palencia and hope it is big enough for a hostel to be there… wouldn’t that be nice.