On Mount Artxanda, a big red label tells us what we’re looking at. Like most labels in the Basque Country, it’s bilingual, providing the name of the city in Basque and Spanish: Bilbo and Bilbao. Come closer, have a seat.

Mount Artxanda

Old town

Bilbao is situated in a river valley surrounded by hills. An unnaturally red Christmas tree stands out from the old town area.

Old town

The Christmas tree is rather gloomy. Since it’s the start of November, maybe it’s just been erected and not decorated yet. The beautiful Basque flag on the left looks more Christmassy. What day is it anyway?

Red Christmas tree

Buildings in the old town often have enclosed balconies, sometimes round.

Old town

In fact, the old town has a lot of round shapes, unlike the modern buildings in the background.

Train station

Riverfront

Further along the river is the Guggenheim Museum.

Guggenheim Museum

Some art escapes the museum, such as this spider that crawled out.

Spider

Or this puppy, that was left outside for being kitsch.

Kitsch puppy

Residential

Since Bilbao is surrounded by hills, a lot of the city is hilly. Such as this residential area. It’s connected to the old town by the big grey elevator on the right.

Residential area

To ease walking through hills, some streets have escalators. Right, outdoor escalators in a very rainy region.

Street escalators

Also, there are many elevators.

Elevator

I stayed in this area and never walked there from the city centre. I most often took the bus or metro + elevator. This gave me the authentic local experience.

Residential area

Transport

Back on the hill stands a fingerprint sculpture, which is also found on the public transport card. I never found out how this symbol is connected to the city.

Fingerprints

The metro is spectacular: stylish, brutal and minimal, like spaceships in films. Public transport is remarkably cheap with the card: metro is €0.60 and bus €0.20-0.30.

Metro

The Colgante Bridge is an interesting mode of transport: it carries people and cars in a hanging gondola. When I was there, the bridge, or rather the gondola, was under repair, so I took a boat over instead.

Colgante Bridge

The rest

What is the rest of Bilbao?

The rest

I never understood it. It felt like the city was trying to speak to me, but in an incomprehensible language, like Basque to me, which made me feel dissociated.

Dissociation

On another day, I saw a lot of people with Palestinian flags near the football stadium. I thought: “Why bring that flag here? They’re definitely not going to play football”. It turned out they were. That day, there was an unusual match between the Basque Country and Palestine.

Basque Country vs Palestine poster

What day is it anyway?