Paul:

In general, I’m not a fan of buses. Don’t care to ride them, even if it’s to the neighboring town for a football game. But in Europe, the scenery trumps all that. With Karen not feeling well, the kids and I walked to the bus station and hopped on for a 1 hour trip to Bilbao. The ride was beautiful, as the highway weaved through the mountains passing farms and lots of grazing animals. The final approach to Bilbao was pretty industrial, but once we got off the bus, and started walking, the scenery changed. We passed the beautiful and relatively new soccer stadium before finding our way to the river walk that led us to the Frank Gerhy designed Guggenheim Museum.

The building itself is an incredible piece of art, and no matter what angle you view it from, it’s captivating. The kids had fun taking pictures of the museum and some of the other works around the outside. We contemplated going inside the museum, but the line to get in was huge, so we went to lunch.

Across the street and not far from the entrance to the museum, we found Serrantes III, where we ate some delicious pintxos.

At this point, the kids were clamoring to get back to San Sebastián and get one more beach trip in before we leave Basque Country.

Karen: We spent the afternoon at the beach with the kids jumping off the platform and sliding down the slide into the ocean. Note that when I say afternoon, I mean 4-7:30pm. Paul has someone say “buenos Dias” to him at 12:30pm. The Spanish sense of time is definitely different than ours. 

For dinner tonight (9pm) we explored the pintxos bars again. The first stop, Bar Larra, had Metallica blaring and items the kids loved: 16 baccalau fritters, 2 burritos, 2 toasted ham egg and cheese sandwiches, 2 “Haragiz Betetauo Piperrak” aka stuffed and breaded meat peppers, and a glass of txocholi for a total of 12.80 euros. We then made a pit stop to El Fuego Negro for inventive and less traditional pintxos including a McKobe burger and a funky ice cream sandwich that looked like a tie-fighter from Star Wars. After that, I was ready for bed so D and I returned to the apartment to pack. Paul and Miss M stayed out, so I’ll let them continue the post with their update…

Miss M: Daddy and I went to La Chuchara de San Telmo for carrillera — braised veal cheek which he loved. And then we went to La Vina which had the really good cheesecake from the other night so daddy had that with a glass of Pedro Jimenez wine. Mommy was sad she couldn’t join us because she’s sick and had to go to bed. On our way home we were walking past a store with bracelets and daddy spotted one that said Mari on it!! We bought it, just like how we bought one in Italy that says Marianna on it.