A walk through Bilbao...

No updates on cheap alcohol, but it finally cleared up today after a few days of rain, so we decided to go outside, explore around the city and take some pictures. Beautiful stuff. We mostly went down Calle Gran Vía (the main road that goes through the city), la Universidad de Deusto (our school) and the world famous Guggenheim museum. I put a new album called "Around Bilbao" on our Spain photo album at http://picasaweb.google.com/bvarnon, so check it out if you'd like. This really is a beautiful town and country.

Here are some of our favorites of the day:


"The Thinker" by French artist Auguste Rodin.

The sculpture is usually housed at the Musée Rodin in Paris, but coincidentally is in Bilbao until February.

It's on Calle Gran Vía, completely free and open to the public and/or passers by.

It's a really pretty sculpture, and by pure luck it happened to be visiting Bilbao the same time we are.

How crazy!


And, here's a shot of Gran Vía at its best. Bilbao rains like Seattle (that's why they call it the "green country" in northern Spain), so when it's a pretty day, you have to take advantage!



This is la Universidad de Deusto, our school:



And of course, the Guggenheim museum:



Before I use up too much space on the blog, I'll stop there. But please check out the online album if you're interested in seeing more.

Oh, and one more thing about the alcohol: we quickly learned that even though some wine is cheaper than water, good wine isn't. I.e., the .98€ bottle of wine that we bought last night = not a great idea and is subsequently somewhere down the drain. Yuck.