We visit the capital of the province of Bizkaia. It is also the largest city of the autonomous community of the Basque Country. From hearsay we imagine one or the other under Bilbao and so we are looking forward to the stop in Bilbao. After a very quiet night outside, we look for a parking lot near the center. Unfortunately, many parking lots have a bad rating – risk of burglary even in broad daylight. The guarded parking lots of the city are unfortunately all full and/or much too narrow for our Ben when we arrive. The journey through the industrial area has not inspired our confidence in the city either and so it comes that we decide for an unusual division of labor of the city visit.
Mimi really wants to visit the Guggenheim Museum, especially because of the special building. Paddy is not equally interested and so we park in a side street. Paddy stays in the Ben to check on things and Mimi visits the museum in the meantime.

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

The Guggenheim in Bilbao is probably known to every architecture lover. The quirky building was designed by world-renowned architect Frank O. Gehry and remains one of his most famous and expressive buildings. With the Guggenheim, Gehry created a groundbreaking building for deconstructivism. A building that defies the laws of conventional geometry, statics and straight lines. The building itself is a work of art; elements such as a roof are no longer purpose elements, but become part of an art element.
Inside, the Guggenheim houses an exhibition of modern art on an area of over 11,000m². Of course, Mimi did not miss the exhibition, but the building itself remains the highlight.

The Guggenheim Museum had an enormous impact on the city of Bilbao. If before it was an ugly industrial city, marked by industrial decline, with the new museum the city became a tourist magnet for people from all over the world. Suddenly, tourists came in huge numbers and flushed a lot of money into the city. The “Bilbao effect” followed; the former industrial sites along the Nervión River were transformed and renaturalized, and the harbor was even moved a bit further towards the sea. Shopping streets, beautiful promenades were created and the old town was restored. Other star architects such as Norman Forster and Santiago Calatrava added further works of art. Bilbao is flourishing.
Today, this development – art leads to economic boom – is called the Bilbao effect.

After the museum visit, we drive through some streets of Bilbao, but we just do not warm up to the city. So it comes that this city visit comes to an end already after a few hours and we are on the onward journey.
Who knows, maybe we will give the city a second chance sometime. For the moment it should probably not be. On our trip in the van, we have learned to listen to our gut feeling and here it does unfortunately not feel well at all.

But since we liked the last city, San Sebastian, so much, we are confident that many more great Spanish cities will follow.