(Sat. Oct. 10th!)
Dave woke up with a sore head and...some blood stains on his pillow, and memories of a tree-climbing mishap the night before...I took a picture of his head with his camera so he could see what it looked like.
We started down the river towards the Guggenheim, which is sitting on a curve in the river in order to be visible from all over the place. Its placed as an icon of the city.
As we got closer, we started seeing some cool bridges.
Being that it was my birthday, I had to get some pictures in front of the Gugg. Notice the Japanese cartoon character looking red bridge support to the left of it.
Still closer yet, me and Kat. This is the most photographed face of the building, but its actually the back, where an outdoor patio is- the entrance is around the other side. As you can see, Bilbao was kinda gloomy and overcast, but the temperature was pretty agreeable anyway. Can you believe that's a building behind us? Clad in titanium...
Though we got that close to the building, we actually didn't go see it yet. We continued down the river. Apparently it rains enough there that while it was clear we stayed outside doing other things. We headed to another Calatrava bridge (seems there's one in every city huh)
...and got more good photos of the Gugg first. I call it the Gugg I guess because of the football building The Gugliemino on NDs campus- my friends thought the name Gugg was funny. I believe the left wing of the building was supposed to look like the prow of a ship, extending down the river.
Here's the Japanese cartoon character bridge from underneath.
Every city in Europe seemed to have these kind of trees, or at least every city in Spain- they look great lining streets. Very nice shapes, with the fingers opening upwards.
I believe I've already mentioned and shown how much Dave likes public sources of drinking water. Behind him is another one of those little circular pee-stations that probably drains right into the river.
This building was on the river, and those were each peoples' sun porches. Could you imagine having windows that color in your apartment, when the sun comes through? Amazing! Or hideous, or blinding, depending on your point of view :)
This buildings were across the Calatrava bridge. Quite out of place and way too big.
But crossing the bridge was a pleasure. The white cables going up to the top were actually very loose, you could grab and shake them with your hand...usually thats because of factors of safety- they're loose now, but if high winds, or lots of people came along, they could go taut without snapping, and hold up the bridge.
The support of the bridge and the ramp going down to the river. The city also built a ramp to the bridge from those huge buildings, causing Calatrava to sue saying they ruined his architecture. Unfortunately for him, he didn't own it, he just designed it.
Then we headed underground. Sir Norman Foster, a well-known British architect, designed the subway system, or at least the stations, underneath Bilbao. They were bloody far underground. And vast. Lots of monstrous concrete and repetitive forms, good for photos :)
Monstrous steel too! Supporting a pathway.
We finally circled around towards the Gugg again. We broke for lunch, during which time I saw again the same ostensibly homeless man I'd seen a few times now, not doing a very good job of faking that he needed the crutch he was carrying around. Of course he didn't seem to recognize that I was the one that had given him half of my sandwich a day before.
I ate my lunch outside the front of the Gugg with friends Todd and Shawna, and it was actually a bit sunny, pretty nice. We had a good view of the giant teddy bear made up of blooming flowers, as well as the random completely blue part of the building I'd never seen before.
This is a view upwards from right before I entered the lobby. He loves playing around with glass and titanium clad shapes.
Unfortunately I got no good photos of the interior of those same shapes, because picture taking wasn't allowed, and so all the pictures I took on the sly from down near my waist, didn't turn out so hot. However, once we finally left the atrium (which took awhile, listening to the audioguide go on and on about Frank Gehry's design influence and aesthetic and all this stuff architecture students already knew) we got to a very pleasant surprise indeed. A RICHARD SERRA EXHIBIT!
Richard Serra is an artist who does large-scale installation art, out of steel, usually rusted steel, usually rolled steel sheets. Here is a couple photos of the scale mock-up model, showing the progression of shapes. Looks interesting, but perhaps simplistic...until you walk through.
Here is the actual exhibit. HUGE. The panels weigh TONS. They stand up under their own weight because of the curvature of the shapes.
You can see from my hand, how thick the panels were. Incredible. This exhibition was designed for this room, and will never leave. I'm assuming the room was designed for the exhibition to a degree as well, considered the massive extra supports they must have under the floor.
Get a sense of how tall it is. It was like an artificial canyon...one that rang when I rapped on it with my ring :)
Walking inside the shapes, the shadows and the light and dark were great. And voices would echo so far within the pieces, you'd think someone was just around the corner and it'd take you two more minutes to finally see them walking around towards you.
We also went outside and saw this work of art, that looks like balloon lollipops, and it was metal I think. This is on the river, opposite the wonderful photos we took of the building.
After spending hours in the Gugg, we went back home and took a nap, charged cameras, recouped, after some more wandering around. Some people slept for quite awhile. Then we headed out for a little birthday dinner, just me and the girls (Kat, Shawna, Jessica, Alex, Britta) cause the guys had already gone earlier, to the same place. They liked their own forays ahead of the pack. This was my appetizer, a single quesadilla (we had Mexican in Spain) and a nice Dos Equis. Josh's favorite.
We then found a little corner mart and got some 1 euro beers and sat in the window out of the rain and had a birthday drink. Thanks friends for making it a good birthday, my first away from, well, everyone else in my life!
But unfortunately no one would buy me either of these cars for my birthday. Can you believe that. Its just a Maserati, c'mon! Scary thing about cars in Europe- they cost the same number of currency units, its just that the currency is almost 1.5 times the US Dollar- so a $80,000 Maserati costs 80,000 euro- aaaaaaand that's almost $120,000. MAN.
This night ended with people staying out way too late again, while Kat and I enjoyed a bottle of rose Cava (Spanish champagne) in my room cause we were about ready for bed. Actually we only enjoyed about 2/3 of it, after Kat had a little overflow opening the bottle. Oops. I knew that we were up early enough in the morning that I needed some sleep. Our hotel gave us pretty good breakfast, meats and cheeses good enough for making sandwiches for lunch later, which was expressly forbidden (and many got caught doing it) so I hadta be sneaky about that.
Then we were off to San Sebastian to complete our weekend!
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