I Think Green Is My New Favorite Color

Today was our first day in Spain and at first glance I was much more excited for docking here than Portugal. While Lisbon was our first port, and I just wanted to get off the ship for the sake of exploring, the area of Spain we are visiting, Basque Country, just has so much greenery that I pretty much fell in love at first glance. I don’t know what it is about a multitude of green trees, hills, and grass is, but Bilbao and the surrounding areas have them, and I just can’t get enough of them.

            I had my second field lab today—for Great Monuments—and thankfully instead of going straight to the Guggenheim Museum we went on a hiking tour of Bilbao first. We got to see both the older and newer parts of Bilbao and it was during this tour that I learned I also have an obsession with the buildings of Bilbao. This obsession is not quite as strong as the one I have for the painted buildings of Lisbon, Portugal, but it comes pretty close. The buildings of Bilbao are not painted a rainbow of color; no, they are shades of beige and white. It is the painted balconies with box after box of flowers that set these buildings apart from those back home. One building had blue-painted shutters and railings while the one next to it had green, and the one next to that had red. The architecture obsession came in to play as soon as I saw some of the older cathedrals or theatres in Gothic, High Gothic, or Late Gothic style. There was some Baroque as well. Basically all the styles of buildings I prefer were in Bilbao and, again, I took way more pictures of buildings than of anything else. Don't worry, I won't force any of you to look at all of them. 

            After our walking tour of Bilbao it was time for lunch. We stopped at a small, nice restaurant in Bilbao where we proceeded to eat pintxos. Since pintxos is a more a style of food than one particular recipe, the best way to describe them may be that they have a hard baguette bottom, some type of meat/fish or cheese (sometimes both), a fruit or vegetable topping, and some kind of sauce inside or drizzled over the whole thing—usually mayonnaise. At least this is what I’ve gathered from the one time I’ve eaten them. They’ve been compared to tapas, which I had never eaten, so whenever they were compared this way most people nodded their heads in understanding while I just looked confused. We had five pintxos each and I definitely dropped part of one of them on the floor accidentally. Thankfully, no one seemed to notice. I also got some sauce stuck in my hair. Apparently I was five years old while eating lunch. 

            The star of the day was the Guggenheim Museum. We were given two hours to wander around the museum before meeting up as a class. The modern art exhibits were nice, but since I like paintings and classic sculptures more than modern art, I did not spend much time in each exhibit. I feel like so much modern art tries to make a person contemplate the meaning of life. Is that really a blob on canvas or is it a mirror for reflecting your soul? Plus a lot of modern art is just really ugly. Sorry if you're a big fan, but I think trash refashioned into random shape can still just be trash. Anyway, back to the Guggenheim.

             One art piece I did appreciate is called Wish Tree. The piece consisted of a potted tree and slips of white paper on string hung on the branches. Each slip of paper had a wish written down on it by one of the museum’s visitors. It’s an interactive work, like many of the pieces in the museum, and encourages each person to write a wish down on a slip of paper sitting on the table next to the tree and then hang it over whichever branch they choose. I participated because I like the idea that a person can write his or her wishes down but have them remain anonymous. The other hit of the day was the Puppy. The Puppy is covered in multi-colored flowers changed twice a year and is massive—a couple stories at least. This piece was originally intended to be a temporary installment at the Guggenheim but the people loved it so much that they petitioned to make it permanent. The Guggenheim people, whoever they are, clearly recognized that a piece that creates such a reaction should stay at the museum. So they kept it. Visiting the Puppy was our last stop at the Guggenheim before getting on the bus heading back to the ship.