Monday, July 16, 2012
Candice & Zach :: Carpinteria Engagement
Last Sunday I had the immense pleasure of meeting up with Candice and Zach to shoot their engagement pictures. It was a perfect afternoon for taking pictures, and the views were incredible. Candice and Zach were awesome; I'm pretty sure they were busting up into laughter in 50% of the pictures that we took :) Here are several pictures from the session!
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Feria Traveling: Santander
Welcome to the last leg of Tori, Michelle's, and my trip through northern Spain! Last time I left you, the three of us were shivering in San Sebastián (though still enjoying the beautiful views). Our journey soon took us back to Santander, the city we originally flew into. That meant only one thing: the bus station bakery would once again be within our reach :P
Okay, it meant other things as well. For one, we were leaving the Basque Country and heading back to Cantabria (those are two autonomous communities, kind of like our states, within Spain), so no more signs with words written in Basque and unfriendly Basque people :) Also, it ended up meaning that we were actually going to get some sunlight on our trip!
See? Sunlight!
Santander is located right on this huge inlet/bay that you can see snippets of on the left side of the image above, so naturally it's a port city. In addition to shipping, banking is super big in Santander. In fact, one of the main banks in Spain (and coincidentally one of the ones that didn't charge me frustrating transaction fees, or at least claimed that they wouldn't) is named "Santander."
Santander is also along one of the routes of the Camino de Santiago (a really famous pilgrimage route that we learned about in our Tres Culturas class). The remains were found during a time when most of Spain was under Muslim rule, so many scholars say that the remains in the tomb probably don't belong to James but rather were claimed as such in order to encourage pilgrimage, which would spur moral support in the midst of trying circumstances. All that to say, if we had wanted to go on a pilgrimage, we could have. On the flip-side, if we had just wanted to get out of Santander, we would've known right where to go; the sign on the right designates it perfectly.
One more interesting thing about Santander for those who were on SIS: there was a huge fire there in 1941 known as "The Andalusian." Why? Because it started on Calle Cadiz and ended on Calle Sevilla (great time for one of those Inception watch-slowing-down moments...)!
Since it was sunny, it made a lot of sense for us to go to the beach. First, however, we found our hostel, helped a British (if I remember correctly) man with his computer problems, and made a stop at the Russian store right next to our hostel (go figure - Russians are everywhere!). In the image above you can see a picture of my favorite Russian drink: березовый сок (birch juice). It's really good, promise. Ask Tori and Michelle; they'll tell you! This brand was pretty good, but I got to try some that my cousins actually collected from birch trees and bottled themselves when we visited Belarus eight or so years back. So good! Oh yeah, and there's one of the water bottles we had to pay €1.50 for at the Chinese restaurant in San Sebastián. We made sure to get our money's worth out of the bottles by continually refilling them. We are, after all, frugal college students.
Above on the left is the Palacio de la Magdalena (Palace of the Spongecake). I have no idea why it's called that. Then a lonely lighthouse, some green grass, urban rock-climbing, a lawn you're not allowed to play fútbol on, a Biscayan wave (the body of water that nestles itself into the corner formed by Spain and France is called the Bay of Biscay), and an epic UNO session. Due to the weather, we ended up playing a lot of UNO on our trip. But not just regular UNO, because that's boring. We were playing UNO EXTREMO. Four times the speed, four times the fun, fourever.
Here's a little marina we passed on our way back.
#artsyshot
After an afternoon and evening of walking around, it was time for some eatingzzzz. Well, much to our dismay, the bus station bakery was closed. So we called the manager, asked for her permission to bake croissants for ourselves, and proceeded to do so (as you can see on the right).
The other possible explanation is that the pictures on the right are from breakfast the following morning :)
After breakfast, we did more sight-seeing, which included finding a cozy little shop that sold tea and coffee. Tyson, you would've loved this place.
Oh, yeah, that big arch building is a bank (just to confirm my previous assertions about Santander's economy).
We had a little extra time on our hands, so we bought spray paint and went to town.
The University of Cantabria. See that zig-zaggy-lookin' path right by the road? From where we stood, we couldn't figure out whether it was all at a constant lope and just zig-zagged, or if it was flat-sloped-flat-sloped-flat. What do you think? We found out when we got down, but I'm not gonna tell you :)
And then we made one final beach visit! Great weather, huh? Well, it lasted for fifteen minutes, and then the rain broke out again. Wooo. Partay.
Hahaha, well that's a wrap for our trip up to Bilbao, San Sebastián, and Santander. I've definitely enjoyed reminiscing about this trip, so I hope you've enjoyed reading about it!
Until next time! Tsa luego!
Okay, it meant other things as well. For one, we were leaving the Basque Country and heading back to Cantabria (those are two autonomous communities, kind of like our states, within Spain), so no more signs with words written in Basque and unfriendly Basque people :) Also, it ended up meaning that we were actually going to get some sunlight on our trip!
See? Sunlight!
Santander is located right on this huge inlet/bay that you can see snippets of on the left side of the image above, so naturally it's a port city. In addition to shipping, banking is super big in Santander. In fact, one of the main banks in Spain (and coincidentally one of the ones that didn't charge me frustrating transaction fees, or at least claimed that they wouldn't) is named "Santander."
Santander is also along one of the routes of the Camino de Santiago (a really famous pilgrimage route that we learned about in our Tres Culturas class). The remains were found during a time when most of Spain was under Muslim rule, so many scholars say that the remains in the tomb probably don't belong to James but rather were claimed as such in order to encourage pilgrimage, which would spur moral support in the midst of trying circumstances. All that to say, if we had wanted to go on a pilgrimage, we could have. On the flip-side, if we had just wanted to get out of Santander, we would've known right where to go; the sign on the right designates it perfectly.
One more interesting thing about Santander for those who were on SIS: there was a huge fire there in 1941 known as "The Andalusian." Why? Because it started on Calle Cadiz and ended on Calle Sevilla (great time for one of those Inception watch-slowing-down moments...)!
Since it was sunny, it made a lot of sense for us to go to the beach. First, however, we found our hostel, helped a British (if I remember correctly) man with his computer problems, and made a stop at the Russian store right next to our hostel (go figure - Russians are everywhere!). In the image above you can see a picture of my favorite Russian drink: березовый сок (birch juice). It's really good, promise. Ask Tori and Michelle; they'll tell you! This brand was pretty good, but I got to try some that my cousins actually collected from birch trees and bottled themselves when we visited Belarus eight or so years back. So good! Oh yeah, and there's one of the water bottles we had to pay €1.50 for at the Chinese restaurant in San Sebastián. We made sure to get our money's worth out of the bottles by continually refilling them. We are, after all, frugal college students.
Above on the left is the Palacio de la Magdalena (Palace of the Spongecake). I have no idea why it's called that. Then a lonely lighthouse, some green grass, urban rock-climbing, a lawn you're not allowed to play fútbol on, a Biscayan wave (the body of water that nestles itself into the corner formed by Spain and France is called the Bay of Biscay), and an epic UNO session. Due to the weather, we ended up playing a lot of UNO on our trip. But not just regular UNO, because that's boring. We were playing UNO EXTREMO. Four times the speed, four times the fun, fourever.
Here's a little marina we passed on our way back.
#artsyshot
After an afternoon and evening of walking around, it was time for some eatingzzzz. Well, much to our dismay, the bus station bakery was closed. So we called the manager, asked for her permission to bake croissants for ourselves, and proceeded to do so (as you can see on the right).
The other possible explanation is that the pictures on the right are from breakfast the following morning :)
After breakfast, we did more sight-seeing, which included finding a cozy little shop that sold tea and coffee. Tyson, you would've loved this place.
Oh, yeah, that big arch building is a bank (just to confirm my previous assertions about Santander's economy).
We had a little extra time on our hands, so we bought spray paint and went to town.
The University of Cantabria. See that zig-zaggy-lookin' path right by the road? From where we stood, we couldn't figure out whether it was all at a constant lope and just zig-zagged, or if it was flat-sloped-flat-sloped-flat. What do you think? We found out when we got down, but I'm not gonna tell you :)
And then we made one final beach visit! Great weather, huh? Well, it lasted for fifteen minutes, and then the rain broke out again. Wooo. Partay.
Hahaha, well that's a wrap for our trip up to Bilbao, San Sebastián, and Santander. I've definitely enjoyed reminiscing about this trip, so I hope you've enjoyed reading about it!
Until next time! Tsa luego!
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Feria Traveling: San Sebastián
Hola! If you didn't catch the last blog post, I'm writing about my trip up to the north of Spain with Michelle and Tori. Here, we're in the process of heading from Bilbao to San Sebastián:
After running (well, speed-walking would probably be more accurate) frantically from the funicular to the bus station (we were trying to catch a bus that our new German and Finnish friends said was cheaper than the rest), we had our heading set for San Sebastián. Now, there's a little history here. I came pretty close to studying in San Sebastián for the entire semester with USAC, and the main thing that kept me from doing that was that the program ended near the same time that the Westmont orchestra tour would be ending, which wouldn't have really worked out. In fact, I talked so much about San Sebastián freshman year of college that Dsan dubbed it San Obsession :) All that being said, I'm really glad I ended up studying in Sevilla, because I would've frozen in San Sebastián. We weren't even there in the winter, and we were slowly turning into hielo.
Anyhow, here's us taking some of our first steps in San Sebastián. On the upper left is Tori with our German and Finnish friends. Right below that picture you can kind of see the Puente de María Cristina, which was modeled after the Alexander III bridge in Paris (the big ornate one with the tall golden monument pillar things on it - great description, I know).
A chilly beach. Swimming, anyone?
After getting settled in our hostel, we headed back out to walk around for the evening. Here are some scenes from the street.
In the last post, I talked about the guy we met up with in Bilbao that spoke a ridiculous number of languages. Well, one of his friends said the marina had some good places to eat, so we figured we could explore the area (we didn't end up find a place to eat there, as you'll see later). That top left picture of Tori and Michelle has got to be one of my favorites of the two of 'em from the whole trip.
Bike.
On either side of the main bay in San Sebastián, called La Concha, are big hills, perfect for defending the bay from mischievous pirates and for sightseeing. In the hopes of accomplishing either of those two activities, we trekked up the hill on the eastern side of the bay. You can see on the signs that there are two languages posted; the one on the top is Basque, and on the bottom is the Spanish translation. Basque is really interesting; linguisticians (I thought I was making that word up, but apparently it's real) say that Basque has no linguistic roots to any other language we know of.
As stated previously, it rains a lot here. Hence, verdant hillsides abound.
The view from the top.
We descended the opposite side of the hill down to the ocean. There was a guy playing trumpet to a background track blasting from his generator-powered amplifier. Cheesy, but at least it was jazz, and somewhat live (well, kind of). I wonder what his reaction would have been if I had accidentally tripped on the power chord from the generator to the amp in mid-song.
I think this is some kind of exposition center.
The next morning, we found a Dia (!) and bought breakfast to make at our hostel. To be more accurate, we actually found the Dia the night before when searching for a place to get dinner, but it was closed. Our plan B (or C or D, not sure what it was at that point) was a Chinese restaurant we found; it was pretty good, but when we asked for tap water, the lady brought over bottled water and charged us €1.50 for each. AHHH. What's the deal with Europe and serving free tap water?! Anyway, back to breakfast. It smelled up the whole room with the delicious aroma of fried bacon and toasted bread.
Oh, I should tell you about the hostel! It was called Olga's Place, and yep, you guessed it, Olga is Russian. I loved meeting Russians in Spain! It was like finding a tiny piece of home while thousands of miles away. The not-so-good aspect of the hostel was the British girls down the hall that came home drunk at 3 or 4 in the morning and decided to hang out in the lounge for an obscenely long time before finally going to sleep in their room.
After eating, we wanted to subir (y "bijar" - Tori y Michelle) the hill on the other side of the bay. This one was taller, so it had a funicular that you could take up to the top. We walked over there on the shore; it was SO windy and cold. We did see a guy swimming though. When he came out, we cheered for him, and he just gave us this look...not sure how to describe it, but I don't think he was very amused. Those cold Basque people...ha.
And then, for maybe about ten minutes, the sun poked through the clouds. We were so happy to see it. And just like that it disappeared. And started raining.
Before going up the funicular, we walked to what they call the wind combs. They were sculpted by Eduardo Chillida and are so heavy that they had to be brought over to their current locations by a train track built specifically for their transport. The brick floor that you see in the bottom left has these blow holes in it that propel a huge gust of air skyward when big enough waves strike the wall.
After leaving the sculptures, buying a baguette and coffee at a coffee shop, getting told we couldn't eat our baguette at the coffee shop if we wanted to eat it with the melocotón jam we brought with us (Europe, man, I'm telling you...), and eating our food instead in the funicular station, we were riding the funicular up to the top of the hill. Though it was cloudy, the views were gorgeous on either side. The views even made up for the poor taste of the commercialized hilltop (someone thought it'd be a good idea to build an attempt at a small theme park on the top). Then, we walked down the road for our descent (you had to pay again if you wanted to take the funicular back down).
I'll leave you with one last view of the bay before heading out. The island in the middle is actually a giant sleeping sea turtle. I had hoped to see it swim around before leaving, but we had no such luck.
Well, that's our visit to San Sebastián in a nutshell. Last part of our trip to the north (Santander) is coming up in the next post! Tsa luego!
After running (well, speed-walking would probably be more accurate) frantically from the funicular to the bus station (we were trying to catch a bus that our new German and Finnish friends said was cheaper than the rest), we had our heading set for San Sebastián. Now, there's a little history here. I came pretty close to studying in San Sebastián for the entire semester with USAC, and the main thing that kept me from doing that was that the program ended near the same time that the Westmont orchestra tour would be ending, which wouldn't have really worked out. In fact, I talked so much about San Sebastián freshman year of college that Dsan dubbed it San Obsession :) All that being said, I'm really glad I ended up studying in Sevilla, because I would've frozen in San Sebastián. We weren't even there in the winter, and we were slowly turning into hielo.
Anyhow, here's us taking some of our first steps in San Sebastián. On the upper left is Tori with our German and Finnish friends. Right below that picture you can kind of see the Puente de María Cristina, which was modeled after the Alexander III bridge in Paris (the big ornate one with the tall golden monument pillar things on it - great description, I know).
A chilly beach. Swimming, anyone?
After getting settled in our hostel, we headed back out to walk around for the evening. Here are some scenes from the street.
In the last post, I talked about the guy we met up with in Bilbao that spoke a ridiculous number of languages. Well, one of his friends said the marina had some good places to eat, so we figured we could explore the area (we didn't end up find a place to eat there, as you'll see later). That top left picture of Tori and Michelle has got to be one of my favorites of the two of 'em from the whole trip.
Bike.
On either side of the main bay in San Sebastián, called La Concha, are big hills, perfect for defending the bay from mischievous pirates and for sightseeing. In the hopes of accomplishing either of those two activities, we trekked up the hill on the eastern side of the bay. You can see on the signs that there are two languages posted; the one on the top is Basque, and on the bottom is the Spanish translation. Basque is really interesting; linguisticians (I thought I was making that word up, but apparently it's real) say that Basque has no linguistic roots to any other language we know of.
As stated previously, it rains a lot here. Hence, verdant hillsides abound.
The view from the top.
We descended the opposite side of the hill down to the ocean. There was a guy playing trumpet to a background track blasting from his generator-powered amplifier. Cheesy, but at least it was jazz, and somewhat live (well, kind of). I wonder what his reaction would have been if I had accidentally tripped on the power chord from the generator to the amp in mid-song.
I think this is some kind of exposition center.
The next morning, we found a Dia (!) and bought breakfast to make at our hostel. To be more accurate, we actually found the Dia the night before when searching for a place to get dinner, but it was closed. Our plan B (or C or D, not sure what it was at that point) was a Chinese restaurant we found; it was pretty good, but when we asked for tap water, the lady brought over bottled water and charged us €1.50 for each. AHHH. What's the deal with Europe and serving free tap water?! Anyway, back to breakfast. It smelled up the whole room with the delicious aroma of fried bacon and toasted bread.
Oh, I should tell you about the hostel! It was called Olga's Place, and yep, you guessed it, Olga is Russian. I loved meeting Russians in Spain! It was like finding a tiny piece of home while thousands of miles away. The not-so-good aspect of the hostel was the British girls down the hall that came home drunk at 3 or 4 in the morning and decided to hang out in the lounge for an obscenely long time before finally going to sleep in their room.
After eating, we wanted to subir (y "bijar" - Tori y Michelle) the hill on the other side of the bay. This one was taller, so it had a funicular that you could take up to the top. We walked over there on the shore; it was SO windy and cold. We did see a guy swimming though. When he came out, we cheered for him, and he just gave us this look...not sure how to describe it, but I don't think he was very amused. Those cold Basque people...ha.
And then, for maybe about ten minutes, the sun poked through the clouds. We were so happy to see it. And just like that it disappeared. And started raining.
Before going up the funicular, we walked to what they call the wind combs. They were sculpted by Eduardo Chillida and are so heavy that they had to be brought over to their current locations by a train track built specifically for their transport. The brick floor that you see in the bottom left has these blow holes in it that propel a huge gust of air skyward when big enough waves strike the wall.
After leaving the sculptures, buying a baguette and coffee at a coffee shop, getting told we couldn't eat our baguette at the coffee shop if we wanted to eat it with the melocotón jam we brought with us (Europe, man, I'm telling you...), and eating our food instead in the funicular station, we were riding the funicular up to the top of the hill. Though it was cloudy, the views were gorgeous on either side. The views even made up for the poor taste of the commercialized hilltop (someone thought it'd be a good idea to build an attempt at a small theme park on the top). Then, we walked down the road for our descent (you had to pay again if you wanted to take the funicular back down).
I'll leave you with one last view of the bay before heading out. The island in the middle is actually a giant sleeping sea turtle. I had hoped to see it swim around before leaving, but we had no such luck.
Well, that's our visit to San Sebastián in a nutshell. Last part of our trip to the north (Santander) is coming up in the next post! Tsa luego!
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Feria Traveling: Bilbao
Back to travel blogging for a little bit! Near the end of April, Sevilla always has a week called Feria (translate: fair, exposition, carnival, that kind of general concept). Sevilla gets super crowded during this time because of all the tourists coming in, and we ended up getting 11 days of vacation the way our class schedule worked out, so naturally it was a great time for us to do a little traveling (and don't worry, we still caught a couple days of the festivities in Sevilla at the end!). Michelle, Tori, and I decided to head up north to the Basque Country (a part of Spain that doesn't really want to be a part of Spain :) and visit the cities of Bilbao, San Sebastián, and Santander (not technically part of the Basque region, but pretty close). I'll be putting up a blog post for each city in the next couple days, so stay tuned! The first is Bilbao.
We actually came into the airport at Santander (that's the closest airport that our good friend RyanAir services) and then took a bus straight to Bilbao as soon as we got in (but not before grabbing breakfast at what would soon become our favorite food establishment in all of Spain: the pastry shop in the bus station [more on that in a later post]). We had been checking the weather forecast for northern Spain the whole week before, and it didn't look so good for our entire five-day trip; true to the forecast, Santander had a steady drizzle coming down when we flew in. However, when our bus arrived in Bilbao the rain had subsided a bit, as you can see in the pictures above!
In general, the north of Spain is a good deal different than the south. First off, it's known for it's industry rather than agriculture. Second, the climate is substantially colder. Third, the people are also said to be "colder" (interpret that how you like :).
Here's the boat museum that Tori assumed was free because one of the gates was open. After she coaxed Michelle and I to follow her in, we explored for a little bit and then left...by having to hop over a subway-esque entry way. Yeah, definitely not free. Even better, we walk maybe 50 more steps and realize that there's a maritime museum right in front of us. Great; the first thing we do in Bilbao is sneak into an exhibit at the Bilbao Maritime Museum.
All that aside, it was pretty cool!!
I think this shot is one of my favorites from the whole trip. Not exactly sure why.
River, bridge, skyscraper, playground.
Some of our first glimpses of the Guggenheim Museum. The giant dog is a work of art called "Puppy" by the American artist Jeff Koons, but everyone pronounces it "Pupi" :) Also, a random street corner near the museum, and a pastry specific to Bilbao. Here's a description I found online of it:
"Son bollos de leche, rellenos de una característica crema de mantequilla. Se dice que su origen está en los bollos que se elaboraban en el Café Suizo, de Bilbao. A alguien se le ocurrió abrirlos por la mitad y untarlos con crema de mantequilla."
Paraphrase: They're a type of brioche (which is a type of French pastry), filled with a type of butter cream. It's said that their origin is in the buns that were made in Café Suizo, of Bilbao. The idea occurred to someone to split them in half and fill them with a butter cream.
The culinarily-heavy paragraphs were pretty much just for you Ty, so I hoped you enjoyed them :)
And now for the architecture inside the Guggenheim. I absolutely loved it!
More of the interior.
And now the outside...
It came time for us to find our hostel, so we meandered from the Gugg (I feel like that's what the majority of Californian girls would abbreviate it to if they lived in Bilbao) towards the old part of town (Casco Viejo). We crossed over another bridge designed by Santiago Calatrava (like the Puente del Alamillo in Sevilla that I wrote about near the beginning of the semester), but this one is a pedestrian bridge and is highly criticized because the floor is made of glass bricks. It rains all the time up in the north, so rain + glass flooring = unhappy Basque people. When we crossed it, the whole length of the bridge was covered with a rubber mat. I wonder why...
There's our hostel! It was pretty swanky. After we got settled, we met up with a photographer I knew through a mutual friend and her sister and cruised around the city (by foot of course). I don't have any pictures of Adina or her sister, so you're just going to have to pretend that I'm not making that part of the story up. I do, however, have a picture of me with Giuseppe Verdi, just for Dr. Shasberger ("...and you can even here the 'force of destiny' in the tuba. Dallas?").
I couldn't give you an accurate depiction of our time in Bilbao without mentioning Duffin Dagels. First off, please visit this website. Now, you should probably notice something interesting between that website and this picture... well, I guess you can't copyright a color scheme or alliteration. Does anyone even know what a "dagel" is? That donut, by the way, is a Bavarian Creme. It was delectable.
A couple more picture from that evening. We actually met up with a friend of Dámaris's that she knew through GBU (the Christian university organization that put on the Thursday afternoon Bible studies we went to in Sevilla) and a couple of his friends. This guy was awesome: he was fluent in Spanish, Basque, French, Russian, English, and I'm pretty sure he could speak Catalán and Belarusian as well. I'm Belarusian, and I can't even speak it!
Well, the next morning came around and it was time to head out of the beautiful town of Bilbao. Here's a morning view of the city, river, and surrounding hillsides.
Before we left, however, we had to make a trip up the funicular so we could see the whole city. The view was incredible!
Well, it's time for me to head out. Next stop, San Sebastián! Until then, tsa luego!
We actually came into the airport at Santander (that's the closest airport that our good friend RyanAir services) and then took a bus straight to Bilbao as soon as we got in (but not before grabbing breakfast at what would soon become our favorite food establishment in all of Spain: the pastry shop in the bus station [more on that in a later post]). We had been checking the weather forecast for northern Spain the whole week before, and it didn't look so good for our entire five-day trip; true to the forecast, Santander had a steady drizzle coming down when we flew in. However, when our bus arrived in Bilbao the rain had subsided a bit, as you can see in the pictures above!
In general, the north of Spain is a good deal different than the south. First off, it's known for it's industry rather than agriculture. Second, the climate is substantially colder. Third, the people are also said to be "colder" (interpret that how you like :).
Here's the boat museum that Tori assumed was free because one of the gates was open. After she coaxed Michelle and I to follow her in, we explored for a little bit and then left...by having to hop over a subway-esque entry way. Yeah, definitely not free. Even better, we walk maybe 50 more steps and realize that there's a maritime museum right in front of us. Great; the first thing we do in Bilbao is sneak into an exhibit at the Bilbao Maritime Museum.
All that aside, it was pretty cool!!
I think this shot is one of my favorites from the whole trip. Not exactly sure why.
River, bridge, skyscraper, playground.
Some of our first glimpses of the Guggenheim Museum. The giant dog is a work of art called "Puppy" by the American artist Jeff Koons, but everyone pronounces it "Pupi" :) Also, a random street corner near the museum, and a pastry specific to Bilbao. Here's a description I found online of it:
"Son bollos de leche, rellenos de una característica crema de mantequilla. Se dice que su origen está en los bollos que se elaboraban en el Café Suizo, de Bilbao. A alguien se le ocurrió abrirlos por la mitad y untarlos con crema de mantequilla."
Paraphrase: They're a type of brioche (which is a type of French pastry), filled with a type of butter cream. It's said that their origin is in the buns that were made in Café Suizo, of Bilbao. The idea occurred to someone to split them in half and fill them with a butter cream.
The culinarily-heavy paragraphs were pretty much just for you Ty, so I hoped you enjoyed them :)
And now for the architecture inside the Guggenheim. I absolutely loved it!
More of the interior.
And now the outside...
It came time for us to find our hostel, so we meandered from the Gugg (I feel like that's what the majority of Californian girls would abbreviate it to if they lived in Bilbao) towards the old part of town (Casco Viejo). We crossed over another bridge designed by Santiago Calatrava (like the Puente del Alamillo in Sevilla that I wrote about near the beginning of the semester), but this one is a pedestrian bridge and is highly criticized because the floor is made of glass bricks. It rains all the time up in the north, so rain + glass flooring = unhappy Basque people. When we crossed it, the whole length of the bridge was covered with a rubber mat. I wonder why...
There's our hostel! It was pretty swanky. After we got settled, we met up with a photographer I knew through a mutual friend and her sister and cruised around the city (by foot of course). I don't have any pictures of Adina or her sister, so you're just going to have to pretend that I'm not making that part of the story up. I do, however, have a picture of me with Giuseppe Verdi, just for Dr. Shasberger ("...and you can even here the 'force of destiny' in the tuba. Dallas?").
I couldn't give you an accurate depiction of our time in Bilbao without mentioning Duffin Dagels. First off, please visit this website. Now, you should probably notice something interesting between that website and this picture... well, I guess you can't copyright a color scheme or alliteration. Does anyone even know what a "dagel" is? That donut, by the way, is a Bavarian Creme. It was delectable.
A couple more picture from that evening. We actually met up with a friend of Dámaris's that she knew through GBU (the Christian university organization that put on the Thursday afternoon Bible studies we went to in Sevilla) and a couple of his friends. This guy was awesome: he was fluent in Spanish, Basque, French, Russian, English, and I'm pretty sure he could speak Catalán and Belarusian as well. I'm Belarusian, and I can't even speak it!
Well, the next morning came around and it was time to head out of the beautiful town of Bilbao. Here's a morning view of the city, river, and surrounding hillsides.
Before we left, however, we had to make a trip up the funicular so we could see the whole city. The view was incredible!
Well, it's time for me to head out. Next stop, San Sebastián! Until then, tsa luego!
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