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Wednesday 25th October 2017
Weather: Sunny
Seas: Calm
Usual routine this morning as we got ready to explore Bilboa. We were docking at 8am so once we had got ourselves organised we could walk off the ship and catch the shuttle into town. We were docked in Getxo – six miles or so outside of Bilboa. Another cruise ship was in port – Europa – a German Cruise Ship which was one of the more upmarket ones, only having 400 or so passengers onboard.
The shuttle took about 20 minutes to get from ship to drop of point. Luckily the guide had marked the maps of where we were dropped off. Jon and David used Google pins to mark our location … but just as well we weren’t totally relying on these as they were a little way out! Our first port of call was to the Guggenheim Museum.
Alas the Puppy was undergoing renovation and was shrouded in scaffolding. We decided not to go inside the Guggenheim this visit, instead we walked down the steps to the river front to walk around to the Old Town.
On the River Front, there was a water feature with a stack of metal spheres standing proud. The reflections were pretty cool. We started to walk around, when all of a sudden, everything felt a little cooler and smoke (dry ice) was appearing from around the water. the water area quickly filled up with smoke and this soon spilled over across the river walkway. It eventually became so thick, you couldn’t see anyone else! It was very cool and the smoke disappeared quite quickly. This started at 11am – not sure if this happens at other times of the day.
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We found the giant spider and continued to walk around the path for about 30 mins until we reached the bridge that took us around over the Ria Bilboa to the Opera House.
The lanes in the old town were very narrow and car-free. We found the cathedral then wandered around the lanes to find somewhere to eat. We found a tiny little cafe and ordered food. Euro 15 for 4 sandwiches, 2 beers, a coffee and a hot chocolate (don’t ask – it was meant to be a milkshake!)
We started to head back to the Shuttle Bus stop via the shopping district – and Mum stumbled on another El Corte Inglis and the boys checked out the tech gadgets once more.
We carried on back to the shuttle bus and there was one waiting we could board straight away. Sailaway this afternoon was on our balconies. Mum had her loyalty bubbly, and we had brought some bubbly onboard and got some drinks in for the kids. The boys loved watching the pilot boat come in to collect the Pilot just after we had left the harbour.
After dinner, the boys disappeared to the Wii Game Station with the promise they’d see us in The Crows Nest at 9pm. True to their word, they arrived bang on time … and settled down to a game of cards.
David and the boys joined us for the Syndicate Quiz this evening. As there were seven of us, we declared we were playing for fun but Ollie disappeared as the quiz started as he was tired. Once Charley figured out who we were, he came over and told us were playing competitively as half the team were kids. One chap seemed to had left their manners behind this evening. We received a snide comment that “kids shouldn’t be playing” then the same chap then had the audacity to ask Charley to take over the questions as he couldn’t understand the Irish lass. Both Ents team handled it very well and shut him down. Happy to report though that our team with kids, not only understood the lady – but beat Mr Left-his-manners-at-home (just!).
We did well – 14 out of 20 (winners had 16) – and the boys earned their keep tonight. Callum and Dan getting very excited they could put their Percy Jackson knowledge to good use! A flag question tonight so the pressure was on Callum but he coped admirably and got the answer right.
