Put your most comfortable walking shoes on! We’re walking today in Bilboa, Spain! The ship is nestled right up to the quay and after boarding the awaiting bus we are headed for the hills!

Bilboa is surrounded by two mountain ranges, so we got a bird’s eye view of the city first!

We were in a little park that had this unusual sculpture piece. For some reason it reminded me of fingerprints! Does it you?

Then we headed back to the city and our first look was the Guggenheim Museum………. that sits right along the river. I was just bedazzled with the giant tulips!

And the big shiny balls……….

The building itself was an architectural gem.

No photos were allowed of the artwork inside, but this looks interesting………. from this angle…….

And from this one! All citizens of Bilboa receive a free pass to the museum each year!

Look how clean the water is!

The citizens of Bilboa have worked extremely hard to bring tourists to their city. There is a mixture of old and new……..

And now to the historic district…..

The old historic section of the city consists of the seven parallel streets named One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven! They are very narrow!

And I must have photos of the shop window displays…….

Then through the park and to the plaza…………

There was a Basque gentleman who I watched…….

And I asked to take his photo. He didn’t understand a word I said, so another gentleman interpreted for me and he said yes!

He told me he should have smiled when I showed him the photo, but I liked him just the way he was……..

The last thing on our agenda for the day was the Vizcaya Bridge and gondola. We had a choice of walking across the top of the open-air, open-bottom bridge or taking the gondola. Guess which one I chose?  It was designed by the Basque architect Alberto de Palacio and completed in 1893. The 148 foot high bridge with its span of 525 feet, merges 19th-century ironworking traditions with the then new lightweight technology of twisted steel ropes. It was the first bridge in the world to carry people and traffic on a high suspended gondola and was used as a model for many similar bridges in Europe, Africa and America, only a few of which survive. With its innovative use of lightweight twisted steel cables, it is regarded as one of the outstanding architectural iron constructions of the Industrial Revolution and is a Unesco World Heritage Site! There were several in our group who walked across the top, but the tiny, tiny elevator to get to the top was a no go for me! The gondola just glided over that water!

Well, our beautiful time in Bilboa is over, but it definitely is a place I’d come back to!

If you would like to see more photos of the historic district I put them in my Thursday Door post HERE.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the walk through Bilboa today! See you next week when I’m on another excursion. Be sure to check out the other walks this week HERE.