{"id":4548,"date":"2026-07-02T17:58:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T14:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goingplaces43.com\/?p=4548"},"modified":"2026-07-02T17:58:34","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T14:58:34","slug":"a-visit-to-basque-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goingplaces43.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/02\/a-visit-to-basque-country\/","title":{"rendered":"A Visit to Basque Country"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We weren’t thinking of Basque Country in early 2026 when we bought plane tickets to Spain’s northern city of Bilbao. Our purpose was to visit and admire the late architect Frank Ghery’s masterpiece, his Guggenheim Museum. As museum lovers this would be a special trip. We hadn’t fully taken into account that beyond the museum how surprisingly different Bilbao and its territory of northeastern Spain would be from other parts of the country.<\/p>\n

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Bilbao has a river, an estuary really, called the Nervi\u00f3n that runs through the valley where the city is located. It was the Nervi\u00f3n that the locals call the Ria, that we walked beside from our Hotel Tayko in the Casco Viejo<\/em> or old town to reach the museum on a high point of land.<\/p>\n

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Guggenheim Bilbao<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The extraordianry appearance of the Guggenheim didn’t surprise us; we have seen other examples of Ghery’s work so this one felt familiar. Nevertheless, when we arrived at 7:30 on a partly cloudy evening, the low sun lit its titanium panels in uniquely dramatic ways.<\/p>\n

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“Puppy” Jeff Koons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The next day it rained so it was by taxi that we returned to the museum. Thinking of the Guggenheim as sculpture, the giant spider-like work by Louise Bourgeois that stands next to it on the river side and the equally large floral work by Jeff Koons by its entrance seem to be in good company.<\/p>\n

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Wire Sculptures by Ruth Asawa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We timed our visit to experience the Ruth Asawa retrospective that temporarily fills half of the museum’s Level 1 galleries. Kay has a special place in her heart for this artist’s delicate suspended wire sculptures of which there were many in the show.<\/p>\n

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Asawa Lithograph<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Asawa worked in other media, too, and the show contained many examples of her lithographs and delicate works on paper.<\/p>\n

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Serra Gallery<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Adjacent to the Asawa show on Level 1 is an enormous gallery with a very high ceiling containing several of Richard Serra’s monumental steel sculptures made of curved steel plates enclosing spaces to walk through. Doing so gives a rare sensation that might have something to do with acoustics.\u00a0 Each of these sculptures weighs many tons and one wonders how they were made and how they could have been moved. Were they installed as the museum was being built with the gallery finished around them?<\/p>\n

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“Flag on Orange Field” 1957 by Jasper Johns<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We took in other exhibitions on other levels, including a retrospective of Jasper Johns’ career.<\/p>\n

Beyond the Geggenheim we had the old town of Bilbao to explore and subsequently that of San Sebast\u00edan, the other principal Basque Country attraction. Our Lonely Planet guidebook claims that Basque Country has the best food in Spain so we walked out with our appetites in mind. Spain, of course, is the land of tapas. I can remember tasting them as long ago as my first trip to the country in the summer of 1963-64. Well, the Basque people have taken tapas to an extreme.<\/p>\n

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In Basque they are called pintxos<\/em> and offered in the many bars in town. Each bar seems to put its own creative touch to its offerings. They are eaten with either wine or beer of which there are many varieties to choose from. Sampling pintxos here and there of an afternoon is a fundamental Basque experience not to be missed.<\/p>\n

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Spider Crab Gratin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Beyond the pintxos bars are the restaurants, some of which are very fine indeed if budget allows. Codfish prepared in various ways is a staple. Spider crab served as a gratin in its shell was unusual and delicious.<\/p>\n

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Dover Sole<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dover sole is a speciality rare enough not to pass up. When I’ve eaten it in the past, I’ve been served a single thin filet. However, at Lanperna<\/em> in San Sebast\u00edan, a separate table was placed next to ours and a large tray containing an entire fish placed on it. Our server, armed with two special implements cut away parts that were not to be eaten and cut the rest into pieces large enough that we couldn’t finish them.<\/p>\n

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Tasting Menu at Sukaldean<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One evening we ate in a Michelin-starred restaurant named Sukaldean<\/em>, choosing one of the two menus on offer. I believe there were eight separate courses, one of which was a small piece of sea bass perfectly cooked with a crisp skin. Each course was presented by teams of two black-clad servers. The somelier was a young woman who passed by regularly, making sure we had what we needed to drink. Beyond the food, watching the ways the servers buzzed around the room was an experience in itself.<\/p>\n

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San Sebasti\u00e1n Street View<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When we travel to cities, one of our pleasures is admiring their architecture. Like many European cities, the old-town streets of Bilbao and San Sebast\u00edan are graced with buildings of the same height. It is in the details of their facades that they express their individuality. Look at this street view in San Sebast\u00edan and how the color blue of some provides an eye-apealing contrtast to the others.<\/p>\n

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Bilbao’s Teatro Arriga<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then, there is the monumental archiecture; every city has some. Bilbao’s is the Teatro Arriga.<\/p>\n

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San Sebasti\u00e1n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

San Sebast\u00edan and Biarritz, where we spent a day, are coastal cities. The former faces a delightful bay anchored by small mountains at either end. Its beach is wide with fine sand and walking past it each day to reach the Parte Vieja (Old Town) from our hotel was a highlight of our visit.<\/p>\n

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Sand Art<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One afternoon, an artist had drawn this sand portrait of a dog many times larger than life size.<\/p>\n

I can’t end this short account of our ten days in Basque Country without mentioning some downsides. The worst was that on our second day in Bilbao, I felt the unmistakable early symptoms of a head cold. Perhaps I caught it on the flight from Istanbul, where I had sat next to a woman with a bad cough. In my younger years, a cold was little more than a nuisance. With age colds have become more severe, and this one floored me for a couple days with constant coughs and endlessly draining sinuses. It left me tired and uncomfortable throughout the trip, coloring everything I experienced.<\/p>\n

Other irritants were the Flix buses we used several times to go from city to city. They don’t always use terminals; twice we were dropped off on street corners with our luggage — and without a clue how to get to our hotel destinations.<\/p>\n

Independent travel is more rigorous than an organized tour. We feel the freedom it provides and the memories, even the bad ones, are worth the effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We weren’t thinking of Basque Country in early 2026 when we bought plane tickets to Spain’s northern city of Bilbao. Our purpose was to visit and admire the late architect Frank Ghery’s masterpiece, his Guggenheim Museum. As museum lovers this would be a special trip. We hadn’t fully taken into account that beyond the museum … Continue reading A Visit to Basque Country<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4524,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.goingplaces43.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/DSCF8074.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goingplaces43.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goingplaces43.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goingplaces43.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goingplaces43.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goingplaces43.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.goingplaces43.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4550,"href":"https:\/\/www.goingplaces43.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548\/revisions\/4550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goingplaces43.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goingplaces43.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goingplaces43.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goingplaces43.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}