Around Bilbao, Part 2 - Day 40

After visiting the Guggenheim, Emily and I got a late lunch and then continued roaming around the city, throwing in some shopping along the way just for fun.  The weather didn't cooperate with us, so we got a little wet and our umbrellas were put to good use, but it was still fun to see the city.  Bilbao was less of a "tourist city" than Munich is, so we really didn't go into any other museums or do that kind of touristy thing.  Instead, Emily took me to some of her favorite places in the city.  I know Emily really enjoyed living there and there were still plenty of cool buildings to see (and stores to visit).  She didn't know the names or purposes of a lot of the buildings, so I don't really know either, but they still look cool...

The street on the way from the Guggenheim towards the center of town:

A church that we tried to go into but couldn't find an open entrance to: 

A nice little plaza near a lot of the stores we went into:

One of my favorite things about being in Europe is that old (or at least old-looking) buildings like this one are thrown in among modern stores, and the stores themselves are often also in buildings like this one:

Apparently there's a clothing chain store called Springfield - my friend Meredith took a similar picture of a Springfield store in London, where she studied last semester - so this picture's for everyone back home:


I don't know why Emily was giving me such a strange look...maybe because I was taking a million and five pictures, including one of a lamppost...


This was another part of downtown:


I don't know what kind of store that was, but I thought the characters in the window were interesting:

This was a really pretty church.  We peeked inside and it was beautiful (as most churches here are) but there was a prayer service going on and I didn't want to take any pictures in the middle of the service.  When we tried to go back later, the building was shut, so no luck with photos of the inside:

But never fear, there was another church just around the corner!

As I was trying to take this picture, two random people tried to tell me where I should stand in order to get to best view.  I don't really know why they felt the need to tell me, but it's a good thing Emily was there, because they didn't speak English and I don't speak Spanish... 

All of my photos of the front end of the church turned out blurry, but I really liked the back of this church:


And the organ and stained glass window:


I don't know why this figure needed to be naked in order to attract people to the shop, but why not?


A few more pretty buildings with functions unknown to Emily or me:

Actually, I do know what the side portion of the last building housed - yes, a KFC.  Not just that, but a KFC that dared to put the Colonel behind bars:

Next, we passed a slightly random little cherub-with-a-fish fountain:


Surrounded by fountain frogs:

I saw this statue thing in Emily's photos on Facebook, and I really wanted to see it, but I think her photos turned out better.  Probably because she had sunshine when she took the picture...

We didn't know exactly what this building was for either, but as we got there, we saw a wedding party coming down the stairs, so maybe it's a church or a courthouse or some kind of ballroom or something?

We wanted to get dinner and stay in the city long enough to see the city lit up at night, so we got dinner and warmed up a bit here...I wish it had been nicer so that we could sit out side, but oh well...

We stayed in the city pretty late because it didn't even start getting dark until after 9pm, and it wasn't until 10 or 10:30 that it was really dark enough to get any good views of everything lit up...but more on that in my next post.