After Lorient in Brittany we set sail for Getxo which is the port for Bilbao in Spain, a first visit to that country for me, so for the first time in my life I was in the Bay of Biscay, somewhere notorious for having heavy and rough seas. What a disappointment, it was a flat calm, even the Black Watch’s captain said he had never seen it so smooth.

Anyway, Getxo is a lovely small town but Bilbao is some 15 miles or so away from there and Jack was worried that we might somehow miss the Guggenheim Museum if we took the trip there on our own. So we took one of the tours straight from the ship, scenic Bilbao and the Guggenheim.

The actual Guggenheim building (above) is lovely, it’s definitely the star of the show as there isn’t really a huge amount of artworks inside it. What there is though is quite eclectic so there should be something to suit just about anyone, from small amazingly intricate drawings by Goya to a large exhibition of paintings by Francis Bacon, someone that I can see had artistic talent, but I definitely wouldn’t want anything by him hanging on my wall.

There were a lot of paintings by Picasso too, from all of his periods. You aren’t allowed to take any photos of artworks in the Guggenheim, although they don’t mind you taking photos of the actual building. The architect, Frank Gehry was inspired by fish and you can see not only the fish shapes but also the metal internal cladding meant to depict the fish scales.

Luckily for the locals there are lots of exhibits outside the building that they can enjoy without ever having to go into the museum. I loved the rolling mist that appeared and disappeared from time to time, depending on the atmospherics.

The spider in the photo above has eggs inside it and it isn’t supposed to be frightening but is a tribute to motherhood as she is protecting them apparently.

After seeing the museum and buying a few things in the shop, which seemed to be a lot cheaper than such places in the UK, we made our way back to the bus and were taken on a tour up to the hills surrounding Bilbao. It really is in a lovely setting and you can look down on the whole city from there.

The only downside of taking the bus trip was that we really missed out on soaking up the atmosphere of Bilbao which looked very vibrant and has a reputation as a great place for entertainment. It seems to be the Spanish (Basque) equivalent of Glasgow, artistic and fun-loving. It felt quite like parts of Scotland with the surrounding hills here.

They were very happy to hear that we came from Scotland as the Basque country is of course Celtic and has a strong independent culture of its own, completely different from the rest of Spain.

We intend to go back there again sometime, maybe for a short city break, four days or so. The local people we spoke to were so friendly and they all spoke English. But we were very interested when Maria our tour guide mentioned that the place was well known for very fine rain that soaked you – how like home we thought! We were chuffed to discover that the Basque word for the rain is shirrimirry, very similar to the Scots word smirry for the same type of rain. We’re definitely their cousins and whenever there’s a gathering of Scottish independence folks on TV there’s nearly always someone waving a Basque flag in amongst the Saltires.

It was a very hot day when we were there, around 27 C about 81 F hotter than normal for early October.

You can see more images of the Guggenheim here and Bilbao here.