I woke up on Thursday, stumbled out off my room to be told to get myself sorted out. Within fifteen minutes I was showered, partly dressed, sitting in Cormacs car on the way to San Sebastian, not completely sure what was going on. I'm glad for the quick around. San Sebastian is a glamorous sea side resort. Everything is five star and all the normal Spanish shops are replaced with expensive Italian versions. Everyone is young, rich and beautiful. Obviously, these are my people, so I mingled with ease, dazzling with my wit and charm. The truth is that the only place we could afford to eat was cow themed. Sadly, weather wise it was a horrible day. It poured with rain, was foggy and cold so the city was quiet and it was a shame that the weather prevented justice being done to what is a clearly beautiful city. The drive there however is fantastic. It goes through proper, undisputed, Basque country. Its very mountainous and the road weaves through them high up and you can look down on tiny villages and farms below, it looks like Austria.
Today however was more successful. Marc, his lovely lady wife Kathryn, Cormac and myself ventured to Bilbao for a day of high-browed culture at the Guggenheim. I confess that art galleries aren't my thing, I know you aren't supposed to say that but they aren't. It's over my head and I veer between feeling stupid and angry that these pretentious people make me feel stupid. I did want to go though, and I CAME THIS CLOSE to understanding some of what I was looking at. I really enjoyed it so I now feel I have earned the right to be smug and arty, I'm thinking of buying a beret.
The thing I realized is that the Guggenheim only has a small part dedicated to paintings and when looking at these I reverted back to glazing over but the other stuff (use of the word stuff means I'm in no way arty) was much more enjoyable. The best bit were three video instillations. You went into a small dark corridor and as you walk down you can hear the sound of what awaits you at the end and you can't help feel this growing sense of anticipation until you turned into the room itself. The first one was Nirvana playing Negative Creep. It was loud and the film was jumping and frantic and standing in this small room felt like you were moving within a packed crowd. The other two were of Zidane, and of a Chinese factory. There was an exhibition on an architect Frank Lloyd Wright who came up with these amazing buildings full of bubbles, waterfalls and spiraling towers. Most of them looked like they had landed from an episode of the Jetsons. More of them got built than you might imagine to look at them. He was commissioned to redesign Baghdad in the 1950s, it didn't happen which is lucky as it wouldn't be there now. Despite there being lots of interesting things the best thing about the Guggenheim is the Guggenheim.
It's an amazing building. Bilbao has a reputation for being fun with a lot going on but also for being ugly and industrial. I thought that was very unfair.
One of the best things about Bilbao is that in Basque it is called Bilbo. Which gives me an excuse to post this.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2HQ1K7YyQM&feature=related
I don't think I could ever tire of that.
love love love x
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