Bilbao, a quick journey in this wonderful city

Some pictures from my last small holiday in Bilbao, Basque Country.

Among the streets and buildings of the city the most obvious landmark is the Guggenheim Museum.
Close to it there are two other landmarks: the Iberdrola tower, the tallest building of the region, in this picture dwarfed by “El Poop”: a gigantic flower-dog by Jeff Koons. It was supposedly part of a temporary exhibition but in the end became permanent and a sort of new modern mascotte to this incredible city.

Very closely to the square pictured above there is a massive bridge on the Nervion river: here is the enormous graffiti painted on the main pillar. You can appreciate the size looking at the lampost in the bottom of the image.

On my was to the old town I found this nice modern building showing interesting reflection of the more “traditional” architecture around it. This mixture between modern and more classic style is common troughout the city.

Three distinctive items can be found in the following picture: the typical facades with sheltered balconies, the magnificent fonts used in many basque signs, and the ubiquitous flag of Atletico!

Following the road west you can encounter several interesting buildings: here the modernista Teatro Campos Eliseos, build in 1902.

Wandering in the beautiful and small alleys in Casco Viejo, here after one of the frequent rain showers, helpful to add some reflexes in the picture. Please note the “flag density”: these people love to show where their hearts belong!

After few twist and turns you find yourself facing the river again as it bends around the old town. Old industrial area buildings turned into apartments (and restaurants, of course) were given a nice graffiti-treatment.

That’s all for this section, soon I'll post some pictures from one of the most important parts of Basque culture: the food!

I hope you enjoyed, ciao!