Getxo is only about 20 minutes from Bilbao. We had no problems with driving to the Getxo tourist center by the water. There was plenty of parking - and they used "easypark" which is an app on your phone to pay for the parking. Then we tried to find the entrance to the tourist office. I found an entrance to the building - only it was for health aid - after we asked where the tourist office was, a young women said she didn't know if they were open - but I could have a bike route map! Not doing us much good!
We went back around the corner and found the entrance all blocked off with a note saying they were having technical difficulties. Suddenly someone spoke to me through some slats over the window. She then came out of a different door and handed us a large tourist map and briefly told us a little about the area. Then we were on our own. Lucky for us the sun was shining and soon my rain coat and sweater came off and were stuffed into my backpack.
Bilbao is a cruise ship destination. There is a board walk along the beach. I am not sure how the cruise people get from the ship to this side of the water - but the cruise people were everywhere.
Still from in front of the tourist office - a view of the old fishing port. Note the white houses of the fishing village on the right side of the photo going up the hill.
Another view across the river. The clouds look fantastic here. In another hour the clouds will cover the sky with white and obscure the sun.
There are steps behind this building that lead up to the village of white houses with green and red trim.
One of the fishing homes on the top of the hill.
There is a bar in the building at the bottom of the hill. People gather at bars at any time of the day for a drink and a small bite to eat - sometimes called pinchos or tapas. Here in Basque country they seem to be served at room temperature only. We have yet to see a restaurant that has Menu del dia (meal of the day). We have only found bars, like the one above or very expensive seafood restaurants. Seafood does not mean fish - it means things like octopus, squid, oysters, etc.
We found a lift to take us to the top instead of taking all those steps.
All the houses in the fishing village are white with different accent colors.
Down on the river two sailboats sail into view.
The streets are narrow here - we did not see any vehicles here.
The village is quite small and eventually you reach the modern town. We stopped at this bar for a refreshing drink.
Views in the modern town.
We searched for restaurant that served lunch - but only found bars with pinchos (also spelled pintxos) and seafood restaurants. We decided to wait to eat until we got back to the apartment. Instead we headed for the lighthouse.
Not much to say about this. It is old and run down and spray-painted.
We headed back to Bilbao and our apartment - hoping to miss the experience we had on Monday making our way back from Mundake and ending up in the middle of the downtown rush hour. Michael is using Google maps for driving instructions. It gives a direction once and never repeats it. And most of the time when the road divides and you have the choice of going left or right - it keeps silent. So we are always guessing which way to go and 90% of the time we are wrong. If you remember the video I put on my blog earlier showing the traffic circle with a road running straight through it -we have now experienced that several times. The first time was on Wednesday with our Uber driver doing the driving. But today we drove through two intersections like that. Both times the Google directions told us to move to the far right lane and then make a left turn. Sounds crazy, right? Since I had been watching the traffic in front of our apartment I knew exactly what we needed to do. Michael was confused until I pointed out it was just like what we saw out of our balcony. And then it was not hard at all.
At the edge of the fishing village just as it is transitioning to the modern town, the streets are still narrow. There were very narrow parking spots along one side of the street - every single car had backed into its spot. When we arrived at our BnB - our hostess told us we must back into the parking spot. There are 5 levels of parking under our building - our level only has 8 parking spots. We are lucky to be on level -1. I am sure every other level - all you will see is cars backed into their parking spot! So this backing up into a parking spot - is it a Bilbao thing? A Basque Country thing? or what? It was not true in El Campello, Madrid, Valencia or Alicante - all cities in Spain!
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