Bilbao

Livin’ la vida Pinxos

As you know, I’m Italian, and following the best know cliché, I love food.
I love talkin’ about food, reading about food, watching food photos…and yes, also eating food.
One day I was reading about “foodies” destinations and an article about Bilbao caught my attention and interest.
I love Spain, I love the spirit of Spain, that feeling of joy, relax and blue skies that you can find anywhere there. So I asked my husband: “Hey, why don’t we go to Bilbao?” and he was like “Ok, but maybe we could make a small Spain tour”.
So we decided to fly to Bilbao, taking a car and then make a small road trip to San Sebastian and Madrid – and then fly back home.

In this article, I will start describing our Bilbao visit.
We left in the last days of April, and the trip was 5 days long.
Small note: it was a very hot spring here in Italy that year, we were already wearing t-shirts, shorts, and tanks – you will then understand why I’ making this clarification.
So the first stop was Bilbao. We arrived quite late in the evening to our B&B (Madarian, a very nice place with a super nice host), that was located in Lezema, a small village from which you can reach the center of Bilbao in less than 30 minutes by train (the train station is very close to the B&B).

We were welcomed by the host and from very wet weather, that continued also the morning after when we reached Bilbao by train to get our rented car.

First tip: if you go to Bilbao, be sure to pack an umbrella and a raincoat. As we understood, it wasn’t an unlucky day, Bilbao has always very-changing weather, with sudden showers, so better be ready.
So we waked up early, reached Bilbao-Abando train station that I suggest visiting in any case, because of its charming liberty style – and had a glorious breakfast at La Parada de Bilbao, that is a cafè located inside the train station, where we got a coffee and some serious pain au chocolat (approximately one pound of butter and chocolate – real paradise), waiting for the rental opening – also Europcar is located inside that station.

Tip n.2: if you have a car, make fuel of patience to find parking.
Bilbao is a very enchanting city, with its alleys and up-and-down narrow streets, but surely it is not car friendly. We ended up leaving the car at the polideportivo parking – half-mile walk to the center included.

So we spend the rest of the morning walking through the old-fashioned streets of Bilbao, making a snack-stop at beautiful Mercado De la Ribera, a place you should include in your Bilbao tour. The Mercado is very nice – as all of the Spanish markets of this kind – and you can also find a wonderful food court where pinxos tasting is highly recommended. By the way, “Pinxos” is the Basque version of “Tapas” (the main difference is that here you always have a bread slice as a base).

Bilbao is quite small, and I suggest to walk to visit it. Everything is quite near, and in this way, you can fully enjoy the local spirit – and also have an excuse to eat some extra-pinxos “with all that walking!”. Here some photos of the places that impressed me the most. Among these, obviously the Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa and, if you have time and a car, I suggest also Portugalete, to see and have a ride on the incredible Vizcaya bridge.