Onto Bilbao, Costa Vasca and San Sebastian

Our hotel really is fabulous. I decide to take a walk down along the beachfront which was a good idea going along it until I had the all uphill walk back to the hotel but is was a good hour's exercise and I got some great photos. Time for a shower and sit down. Because we are both pooped we decide to order in room service for dinner and after sitting out on our balcony enjoying the view we have our dinner and decide we are due an early night as it is already 9.30. Has been a lovely day. The northern area of Spain is markedly different from Madrid and surrounds. Dare I say, better??? Looking forward to a sleep in in the morning as we don't have to leave until 9. Just hope the amplified singing we are hearing from somewhere along the beach at some sort of festival doesn't go on all night.
Awoke to another perfect morning and after breakfast off we go again in 22 degrees and blue skies with 27 forecast. An hour and a half later we arrive at Bilbao and are dropped near the Guggenheim museum. It certainly is a spectacular building, but I may be a bit biased because it doesn't have nearly the same pretty charm of the Sydney opera house. Anyway we decide to spend our free morning going into the museum to check out the modern art. That's 15 euro that would have been better spent on a couple of bottles de vino blanco and a good feed of Tapas!!! What numpty thought a huge recreation of balloon toys are art? And how does doing plaster casts of  Italian art pieces and sticking a shiny bright blue ball on their stomach or shoulders pas itself off as any form of acceptable talent? Jeff Koons really duped people thinking his copies of famous Italian masters' ideas are any form of art. I call it plagiarism. The guy didn't create a single thing that someone else hasn't already created. He just collaged them or made them bigger in bright shiny colours. Reading the scree in my museum guide book had me scratching my head in bewilderment.
"Koons has a unique style that allows seemingly contradictory concepts to coexist harmoniously in his work... Koon's oeuvre (that's exactly how it's spelt in the book) is a statement of self -affirmation."
There was a whole room dedicated to his Made in Heaven works which are paintings, a sculpture and
glass figurines depicting him and his girlfriend having sex in different poses. Talk about self-affirmation, all right. How damned arrogant....
AND ... since when has crappy criminal graffiti made it into a thinking person's art collection? Jean-Michael Basquiat died at 27 but not before doing  graffiti in a lot of New York. If he put that shit up on private property in South Australia he would have been arrested. I've seen better finger painting or crayon stick figures done by 4 year olds who can spell better too.
And a few last words on Koons, anyone want a Five feet high blow up figure of the green Hulk with a pipe organ sticking out its head and key boards dotted along its side?  Oh and it does have a pedal attached to its left foot for  good measure.What a croc of pretentious arty farty smarmy barmy horse manure. The huge floral puppy figure out the front was much cleverer. Okay my tirade is over now.
I can tick the box to say that I've been to a Guggenheim museum, but I've equally confirmed that modern art has no place in my headspace!
Had time for a much needed vino blanco and Pixtos which is Basque for tapas. Now that we are in
Basque country  we need to try and decipher menus. The locals speak Basque as their first language and 'normal' Spanish as a second language. Had time for a walk around part of the city and then back on the coach for a really pretty drive along part of Costa Vasca which is dotted with small coastal fishing villages. As we come into Zumaia which is at the mouth of the Urola we see 'El raton' which is a mouse shaped rock. (It reminds me of a similar view of when we see the bluff at Victor Harbour.) We stop for a half hour at one of the little fishing villages long enough for a cuppa or vino. Care to guess which I had? Then about 45 minutes more and we are in San Sebastián where we have two nights. The hotel is fairly new and very modern so quite minimalist re furniture and fixtures, but the AC works and the beds look comfortable so we will be fine. Pity that there isn't any balcony or any sort of view.
We set off in the coach again after checking into our rooms. Esther is our local travel guide. We are taken to the top of a hill where there are fantastic views of the Bay of Biscayne, lots of beach goers along Le Conch and we can even see as far as the French coastline. It is currently 30 degrees and do warming up as the day has gone on. We drive around the city which is bustling with lots of people, probably because of the jazz festival here right now. We have an hour long walk through the old city and Jo and I will probably come back here tomorrow afternoon when we finish our morning tour. Then it is about 7pm so time for dinner and we are taken to a local restaurant where we toast our trip with champagne and have a lovely three course meal with wines included, naturally. Lots of friendly banter and laughs, then time to head back in the coach to head back to our hotel. Jo and I entertained the group with a couple of ABBA songs on our return trip. I did suggest that Rui our driver might want to drive once more around the block as we hadn't quite finished one song, but he mustn't have understood as he had the bus parked and door opened in a matter of seconds... Has been a good day and I'm looking forward to tomorrow when we head across the border into France. I'm also looking forward to an early night when it is lights out before 11 pm  and we don't leave in the morning until 8.30 so hopefully will  get a bit of asleep in. Night, night.