Around Bilbao, Part 1 - Day 40

I'm still ridiculously behind on my posts, but I really am getting closer, even though it may not seem like it.  I've almost finished picking out all the pictures I want to post for all of the trips I've taken recently, which is pretty much the hardest part about posting, so hopefully I'll be able to finish several more updates in the next couple of days.

But back to my time in Bilbao.  On Friday, my first full say in Bilbao (7 May, Day 40), Emily and I woke up bright and early (well, I guess around 8 or 9 in the morning, which is bright and early as far as Emily is concerned) and took the metro from Neguri back into Bilbao and then spent the day walking around the city.  Unfortunately, the weather wasn't all that great and we got a bit wet, but it was still a great day exploring the city and doing a little shopping.

 We got breakfast at a cafe in a mall near Emily's university:

I had this delicious chocolate croissant - one of the best I've had so far, and that's saying something: 

These billboard-like barriers were pretty cool.  They were covered in sayings and phrases in all different languages: 

There were a couple German sayings on there, which you can see in the last picture.  My favorite was: "Klug zu reden ist doch schwer, klug zu schweigen noch viel mehr," which means (roughly translated) that it's difficult enough to talk intelligently but it's even harder to be intelligently silent.  It sounds better in German :)

There's nothing special about this tunnel.  It took us under a busy intersection so that we didn't have to wait for the stoplight, and I just thought it looked cool:

Emily took me to see her university - Universidad de Deusto:

Palm trees!  I didn't expect those in a university courtyard:

This main hall looked eerily familiar...

...it's very similar to the main hall in the LMU Hauptgebaeude here in Munich. 

This was a cool stone labyrinth outside the main entrance:

A view of the main university building from a bridge directly across from it:


Right across the river from the university is Bilbao's first skyscraper:


It's still being built, and if you look closely, you can see the workers just kind of standing there, right near the edge of the uncovered building - look at the third uncovered level from the top:

It made my knees hurt just looking at them! 

Finally, one of my favorite buildings - the Guggenheim:

I hadn't really heard of it before, but the Guggenheim is a famous art museum (in case other people also don't know what it is, but maybe that was just me...).  I think there are also Guggenheim museums in New York City, Berlin, and a couple other cities.  We made it to the Guggenheim sometime around 1pm and went inside before continuing with our exploration of the city.  The museum was so cool that it get's its own post...

Just to prove that we were actually there: