Bilbao
Our last port day in Spain was the city of Bilbao. The port area is picturesque with a number of large mansions, which is something we did not see anyplace else in Spain. Bilbao is a 30-40 minute drive from the port and the ship provided complementary bus service into the city and dropped us off at the spectacular modern art museum, The Guggenheim. Some people walked to the old town area which they said was beautiful but we spent our entire time at this unique museum.
The museum was designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry and completed in 1997. It is built right on the river that goes though Bilbao. The museum is covered in titanium plates which make the building change color with the light. It has an overall structure that reminds one of a ship but the unique angles and curves provide unique points of view. There are also a number of unique sculptures around the building, many of them immense.
The metal supports and staircases inside the building are all integrated into the architecture. I loved just walking around looking at the inside of the building.
There are a number of galleries inside the museum. The largest contained a fascinating set of iron sculptures fashioned into shapes you can walk through. As you do you sometimes don’t know where you are headed and at times you feel off balance
The other galleries had modern art by a variety of artists, many Spanish. There were also a number of US artists represented including Andy Warhol. The brightly colored and whimsical tulip sculpture by Jeff Koons was originally outdoors but has been moved indoors into the Pop Culture gallery.
We spent about 2 hours touring the museum. By then we were a bit museumed out so we stopped at the museum cafe for lunch. After taking one more walk around the outside of the museum we headed back to the ship.
With everyone on board, we set sail for the port of Bordeaux, France, our last cruise stop.