First Sights: the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Not wasting any time at all, I decided to explore the city on my first day, right after I went out and bought a few of the staples I usually get in a new place. This time, however, I really limited myself to the basics, mostly because I didn’t think cooking was going to be something I’d be doing a lot of. As I mentioned before, I’m sharing this place with a bunch of young people who must still be figuring out that whole adulting thing and sure as heck I wasn’t going to partake in their attempts at doing so. I guess I’m going to eat out a lot more or get takeout.
Fortunately there is a lot to do and see in this part of the world so worrying about my housemates took a backseat and I ventured out. When I picked this apartment it was very important to me that it be central though I had not realised just how central it was. The one thing I wanted to see more than anything else was, of course, the wonderful Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and all I had to do to see it was walk down to the Indautxu Plaza next door, cross a street, and then walk just over a kilometre straight northwest towards the shiny roof of the museum. On the way, however, I quickly became quite enamoured with the local approach to urban architecture: the neoclassical style here is a bit more ornate than in Madrid, and somewhat similar to València’s, though perhaps a bit taller and more colourful. There is also a very interesting mix of old and new, and the new is often very visually pleasing. Not many of the ugly 1960s concrete blocks here, that’s for sure.
As I got closer to my target, I encountered a rather large urban park: Casilda Iturrizar parkea. I decided right there and then that this was going to be my reading and relaxing spot; it was close to the house, large enough to find a quiet spot away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and there was a dog-friendly area nearby. Who could ask for anything more?
I walked by the Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa (Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao) which sits on an edge of the park, but since I was drawn to the Guggenheim like a bee to a flower, I had to leave it for another day. It seems I picked the long way to my target, however, and got to walk through another green area, this time next to the tallest (and possibly only) skyscraper in the city, the Iberdrola Tower. Iberdrola is the largest energy (electricity provider) company in Spain and their tower stands alone against the green of the hills beyond the river. Its coloured glass exterior, surprisingly, does a pretty good job camouflaging it, with the reflecting blue skies making it blend into its surroundings. It’s definitely one of the nicest structures of this size that I’ve seen in Spain so far.
Soon I reached the river, or, rather, the Bilbao Estuary, along which banks sits the famous museum. And then, there is was, in all its glory: the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the European sister museum to the one in NYC. I have had this building shortlisted on my bucket list for years and it made me very happy to be so close to it, finally. I spent an awful lot of time just walking around it. I had realized that since I took the long way to get to it (I meandered through the parks on the way), I was too tired to go inside and give its contents the attention they deserved, so all my initial impressions are external. But what an exterior it is!
I won’t go into the deeper story of the museum just yet, I’ll save that for after my eventual visit inside, but I will mention some of the notable exterior pieces. The coolest was definitely the spider: Maman. It is a bronze, stainless steel, and marble sculpture by the artist Louise Bourgeois, and, since it is an homage to motherhood (hence the name), it contains a sac of 32 marble eggs. It was created in 1999 and has become a favourite spot along the water’s edge for many.
The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. My family was in the business of tapestry restoration, and my mother was in charge of the workshop. Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother.
— Louise Bourgeois
Since it was late afternoon, I was lucky to have most of the area pretty much to myself, as usual, and that gave me a chance to really get close to everything and not have to wait too long for people to get out of my shots. Unfortunately I couldn’t take advantage of that when it came to the other famous sculpture, this time in front of the main entrance, i.e. Puppy, by Jeff Koons. Created in 1992, Puppy is a “behemoth West Highland terrier carpeted in bedding plants,” and it combines flowers and puppies in a monument to the sentimental. The museum’s web page mentions that the size of the puppy is seemingly out-of-control because it is quite literally always growing (it is made up of flowers, after all), but, to my chagrin, I arrived just as the doggie was being groomed! It is still a very cool piece of engineering and it is very large, but I doubt I’ll ever have a garden big enough to do something similar. I also can’t wait to see what the pup will look like when they’re done with all the trimming.
To finish the day, I walked back pretty much the same way all the while admiring how clean and well-cared for everything looked. Bilbao has a lot of green spaces, many in the middle of the various plazas that masquerade as roundabouts and I saw very few buildings in disrepair. My impression was more of being in a northern European city and not a Spanish one, to be honest. And I liked it, a lot!
