At Sea, Bilbao

April 15th-16th
At Sea/Bilbao, Spain

I have nothing special to report for the sea day.
The 16th was my first trip to Bilbao, something I was excited for seeing as I’ve never been to the port before. The plan for the day was to escort a tour that took my into the historic district of the main city, and then brought my group to a town on the coast, a one time fishing village, now overrun with vacation houses.
The actual city of Bilbao was surprisingly nice. Apparently, it used to be an extremely industrial city, a place no one was interested in visiting, but it’s transformed into a gorgeous city, with lovely parks, sculptures, bridges, and museums. It’s most famous for the Guggenheim Museum, the tour I really wanted to get on, but was for what ever reason unable to. But for a city that most people are completely unfamiliar with, it blew me away with how nice everything was. The tour simply walked through the older district so that we could see the architecture and have a couple different historical sights explained to us. It was nice, nothing too exciting, but the city was so pleasant that it made for a great walking tour.
For whatever reason, people who can’t walk always like to sign up for walking tours. I don’t know what the issue is, whether they’re in denial of their condition, think they’ll like the challenge, or if they’re just simply illiterate and can’t read the warnings in the brochure, but there are always one or two people that really put a burden on the tour by shuffling through the streets with their canes. Please, if you ever go on a tour and think you may have mobility difficulties, please fully consider what you’re getting yourself into. Not only will you terribly annoy the entire group, but you’ll hate the tour because you can’t keep up. And, most importantly, you’ll annoy me, the tour escort, who spends the tour running back and forth between the main group and you stragglers who can’t keep up, just so that you’ll know the group turned left 3 blocks ahead. I’d love to just stay with the main group while you’re slowly consumed by the winding roads we walk through, but I’m afraid that I’d never escort again if I left you in Spain. And not that anyone will probably read my rant and take head, but if it can save one tour escort from an old lady with a cane who just signed up to walk 2 ½ hours, I’ll be happy.
Anyway, the next stop was in a city called Castro…something. We saw a really old church that dated back to 1280, and some other old things…yeah, there’s not really much to describe. The city did have some unbelievably nice cafes, all of which I couldn’t stop in due to time restraints.
The tour was OK, I got to see what I wanted to see, it was just that nothing was really exciting. We then returned to the ship and I didn’t have enough time to get back to the city to see the museum, so I just hung out on the ship and waited to play my show for the night. Thanks for reading!