Saturday morning, we drove from one country (Netherlands) to another (Belgium), flew over a third (France) and landed in a fourth (Spain). It’s quite remarkable, actually to think that all these countries are in the same time zone, spend the same currency but have several different languages. There must not be many places in the world where one can have a morning of traveling quite like this!

Both the Brussels and Bilbao airports were full backpackers and adventures heading to San Fermin! The number of backpacks on our flight alone was incredible…. let alone the number on the bus from the airport into Bilbao. English in all accents could be heard everywhere… Kiwi, Aussie, Brit, American but also English being used as the common language for those European speakers who don’t know Spanish!  Our first “taste” of San Fermin (not even having arrived in Pamplona!!) was giving the impression that this whole experience was going to be pretty incredible!!

The Festival runs from July 7th to July 14th which gave us a day to spend outside of Pamplona. We chose to explore the fairly small city of Bilbao  which sits right in the heart of Basque country. After a quick afternoon nap, we set out to find dinner and explore the old town. On our way we wandered through a very interesting African quarter which was quite dodgy… but eventually found the beautiful old town. With it’s plazas, provincial feel, small streets and beautiful apartments with overflowing flower boxes, Bilbao could almost be
mistaken for a French city.

A visit to Bilbao wouldn’t be complete without a wander around the Gugenheim museum.  Or, as Mark refers to it, “The Sydney Opera House on Acid.” After a claiming a free red neck scarf and listing to the bands kicking off the Festival of San Fermin in Bilbao’s Café Iruna we took a good wander around the Gugenheim checking out all of it’s particular angles, panels, and the general funkiness. We didn’t go in, but it’s a pretty cool building from the outside. Then it was off to Pamplona!