We set off from camp and checked in at the Holiday Inn at the airport in Bilbao around noon. We then hopped on the shuttle to the airport and from there caught the bus downtown. We were in a bit of a hurry to try to find a restaurant for lunch since we weren't sure if they only served lunch until 2ish like in France. Trying to find a good place to eat in a short amount of time… never a good idea! Minh-Yen was keen to have paella so we kept our eyes open as we charged along. We arrived at the street where our guidebook mentioned a few restaurants and started reading menus. We didn’t find anything that leapt out at us, but we saw one that had paella as a starter so thought, sure, let’s try here. We headed in and I noticed that all the food was pre-prepared in huge casseroles sitting on the bar. Not a good sign… The restaurant was obviously a local hang out with pictures of a soccer team everywhere and one player in particular – who we later noticed chowing down on paella behind us. Anoop and Minh-Yen went for the paella to start and I had mushrooms in a buttery sauce. When Anoop saw the paella being re-heated in the microwave, that was definitely another bad sign. The paella was not the best – the rice was still kind of crunchy, like when you cook risotto too fast. But it had nice flavour and the mushrooms were good. On to the second course… Minh-Yen ordered pork which came with fries and some red peppers. I had a rabbit stew of some sort which reminded me of a home cooked stew and was fairly tasty. Anoop went for the "calamari". Now when he ordered it, he pictured deep fried calamari like at home. Boy was he surprised when squid in its own ink arrived at the table! It looked like black sludge and it was all any of us could do to keep a straight face. Minh-Yen decided to take a video of Anoop tasting it and we were all giggling hysterically while he attempted to taste it. Meanwhile the lady who was serving us was circling nearby to make sure that we were enjoying our meal. We were trying really hard not to burst out in laughter and be rude. So after Anoop tasted his squid and decided it was too disgusting to eat, he pushed the plate to the side and the two of us shared our meals so that he wouldn’t go hungry. We thought we were in the clear and that we could head off and find something else for Anoop to eat while we wandered around. It was not to be! The lady came back to clear the table and was horrified that Anoop hadn’t told her he didn’t like it – she talked away quite quickly and we thought she said something like “you should have told me you didn’t like it, you need to eat, let me go get you something else”… So we sat and waited thinking that it was very nice of her to go get him something else. She returned with... meatballs! Now of course the meatballs were made of beef which meant Anoop couldn’t eat them. We just stared at the plate in mild hysterics at this point. So, good old Minh-Yen started eating because we couldn’t just leave them there. She was already so full and now had to try to eat 4 huge meatballs. Anoop and I “helped” by eating the fries and I helped cut the meatballs into bits so it looked like we were all digging in. Half way through, Minh-Yen was way too full and couldn’t eat any more. So, when the lady wasn’t looking, she stuffed a meatball in her napkin which Anoop then hid in his pocket. That left one and we decided we just had to leave it. The lady returned and we told her it was all very good and no, we didn’t have any room for dessert. We thanked her and headed out. As we passed by a garbage can, Anoop ditched the last meatball. We had quite the laugh and were reminded of why you should never be in a hurry to find somewhere to eat!

After our lunch fiasco, we headed back through town and wandered towards the Guggenheim. Recalling our experience in Strasbourg, we had decided that we didn’t want to actually go inside since none of us are particular fans of modern or contemporary art. The building is quite impressive and we had a good walk the entire way around it. We started off on the river side where there was a huge spider statue. We continued around until we were in front of the entrance. There was an enormous puppy statue made out of plants which we had a good look at. Then we headed inside for a café to warm us up and get out of the rain for a while. The café was great and we enjoyed the view out the window into the park below. After our café we decided to walk up onto the bridge for views back. By this time it was just pelting and also super windy so the umbrellas were just getting blown all over. We took a few pics and were glad we had headed up because the views looking back on the Guggenheim were fantastic. Afterwards we headed back to the bus stop to go back to the hotel. It said we had 23 minutes until it arrived so we popped into a shop to kill some time. Ten minutes later we were back at the stop, only to see that the bus we had been waiting for had left and we now had 29 minutes to wait. So we decided not to look around anymore and just wait in case it came early again. Nope, it came late! By the time we got back to the hotel we were quite ready to relax in a warm room. Minh-Yen packed her suitcase and put her cheese in the ice bucket so that it would stay cool. We had a picnic dinner with bread, cheese and some salads. After we were all ready we headed down to the lobby in our pyjamas for our tenth and final game of Settlers with Minh-Yen.

The next morning we said goodbye quite early and Minh-Yen headed off to catch her plane. We slept for a few more hours and then headed down to enjoy the breakfast buffet. They had all sorts of tasty cured ham, cheese, tomatoes, toast, buns, pain au chocolat, & pastries. We quite enjoyed our breaky and checked our email one more time before heading off on our way to Porto. We stayed the night in Salamanca and then continued on to Porto the next day. It was quite a long drive so it was nice to break it up over two days.