Bilbao, Spain

Our trip continues,

Bilbao, has a beautiful cruise terminal, with nothing in it except a lot of security people, and the cruise line or city set up a shuttle service  to take you very close to the Guggenheim museum, which probably would have been a good thing, but we had a gastronomic tour in this city known for its very high 5 star restaurants.  Our tour included a by bus tour of the city, and a stop to see the market in old town, then on to our lunch, where our chef, would prepare our food and demonstrate, how to do it. 

First the city, this big red contraption is the Vizcaya bridge. 

The bridge, still in use, is 164 meters long, and its gondola can transport six cars and several dozen passengers in one and a half minutes.

It operates every 8 minutes during the day (every hour at night), all year round, with different fares for day and night services, and is integrated into Bilbao's Creditrans (now "Barik") ticket system. An estimated four million passengers and half a million vehicles use the bridge annually.^[1]

There are two new visitor lifts installed in the 50-metre-high pillars of the bridge that allow walking over the bridge's platform, from where there is a view of the port. 

The next highlight was a wonderful view of the Guggenheim, from across the river. 

It is indeed impressive, and I know you could spend many days in there. 

Then it was on to the market, and it is very modern three stories, and VERY clean, I would be happy to buy my food there, and the verity was outstanding.

Then on to lunch. 

You would never know unless you knew, this was a restaurant. 

This was our demo table. 

Ed fell in love with the hutch. 

The chef prepping the salmon, teaching how you have to take out the bones, and salt it and put citrus on it to pickle it like making  ceviche. 

This was the end of a very elaborate cooking of cod called,  Buccola it’s made from salt cod, and Very good, not salty at all. 

I hope I can find this wine at home, it is very good. 


So that brings us to today, a sea day, last night we had the roughest night yet and today is not much better, but hay it’s sunny. Tomorrow Lisbon and since we’ve been there a number of times we opted for another culinary tour. LOL