Friday, August 13

I spent a few more hours on the beach and in the early afternoon left for Bilbao. Wow, what amazing mansions, villas, large houses decorated by flowers I saw on the way! Some of these were for sale, even though I was carrying large bag, they were not full of bills, so decided not to buy these.

Reaching the mouth of the Nervion river, I was in for quite a surprise. There was a gigantic tower on one side of the river, which I almost missed, as it was hidden by a building, I turned back, saw another tower on the other side – it turned out this is a transporter bridge that links the towns of Las Arenas to Portugalete. It was built in 1893, by a student of Eiffel. It is today part of the UNESCO Word Heritage, considering it to be a perfect combination of beauty and functionality. It was the first to use a blend of iron technology and new steel cables which began a new form of constructing bridges which was later imitated throughout the world. The bridge, very much in use today, is 164 meters long, and its gondola can transport six cars and several dozen passengers in one and a half minutes. Pretty cool.

I was first on the outskirts of town, with some nice and not-so-nice buildings and soon I was in Bilbao-proper. I loved the architecture, most buildings having glass-framed verandas. You would find a green park on almost every corner – and I found lots of large churches.

Through Booking.com, I found a nice apartment for two nights (€100 per night, not too cheap, but this was the lowest I was able to find, and it was OK to sleep in a real bed after so many nights [wild]camping).

Here you can see the trip in Google Maps, it was 29 kilometers, with 238 meters of climbing and 245 meters of descending.