Bilbao, Spain, Europe

I officially had the worst night ever in a hostel last night. I had met one of the kiwi guys who was staying in my room last night before they went out and I thought he seemed like a nice guy. He even said “we’ll probably be coming in late tonight but we’ll try to keep the noise down for you.” That’s all you can really ask for. You know that when staying in a dorm you are not going to have completely uninterrupted sleep, but as long as everyone is respectful, it’s normally fine. These guys were not respectful.

We were in a four person room, but there were only three of us. The other two guys came back to the room at 3am, but they brought four people back with them. We had a small balcony off our room so they decided to have a party out there where they could not have been louder, and smoked with the door open. I got up at least five times to close the door and asked them to do the same, but they were totally hammered and had no common courtesy. I tried to sleep, but there was just no chance with these guys coming in and out, turning the light on and off, and being way too loud. They were even told twice by the police on the street to go inside and close the door because they were being too loud for everyone else on the street.

This party continued until 6:30am when the last straggler finally left. Well, one straggler remained in one guy’s bed after they thought it was okay to start having sex with me sleeping three feet away. I actually had to tell them that was not okay. Who does that?? I’ve stayed in hundreds of hostel dorms and I have never had to deal with anything like that before. I realised at 6:45am that there was no chance I was going to get to sleep because I was so pissed off, so I got up and packed my bags.

I had planned on spending another night in San Sebastian, but there was absolutely no way I was going to be able to stay in that room again. I asked at reception if I could move to another room, but it was all booked up. I then had a look at other hostels in town but they were all booked as well. It turns out the Pamplona running of the bulls is this weekend, so every hostel is completely booked. I made a snap decision, possibly in haste, that I was just going to get the heck out of this town because I was so angry. I found a hostel in Bilbao where I could get a single room and was more than happy to pay a little more than usual (€29) for the privilege. I walked around San Sebastian for a couple hours, (in the rain) saw what I wanted to see, and then headed for the bus station.

I got my ticket for the bus, which was really cheap (€6) and in two hours I was here in Bilbao. My hostel was a little bit out of town, but it was dead easy to find being just two train stops away. I got to my single room and passed out for the better part of an hour. It may not seem like much, but considering I can never take naps, I was happy to get a bit of rest. At about 3pm I decided to try to make the most of this scarred day and see what Bilbao is like. I caught a bus into the city center and had a walk around for about an hour. I hadn’t really eaten so I went into a bar and had some pinchos. They are all over the bars in every bar in Basque country and they are little tapas, or finger foods. Most of them are small sandwiches, but some are cooked things as well. I had a couple of small sandwiches and some chicken and beef skewer things. It was all really good, but I was starving so I would have been happy with anything.

I walked around the north side of the river so I could get the best view of the Guggenheim Museum, and I’m glad I did. It was definitely a better view from that side of the river where you could appreciate all the different curves and angles Gehry used in his design. It is definitely one of the coolest buildings I’ve ever seen. I paid my €13 to get in the museum and it was cool to see that the inside of the building is almost as impressive as the outside. There is not one flat surface in the whole building (besides the floor of course) and it gives the building a really cool feeling. It looks like the inside of the rooms will never end because there are no corners.

I checked out all of the exhibits and I like the permanent ones, but there was a temporary exhibit of Yoko Ono’s work on the top floor. She is weird. Like, really weird. I didn’t realize she considered herself an artist, but I’m not sure that I do. She just does a lot of weird things and then calls them art. It certainly wasn’t my style anyway.

I finished up at the museum at about 7:30pm and headed back out into the rain. I walked around for another hour checking out the city and trying to find where to get my bus back to the hostel. Bilbao seems like a really nice city, and I’m happy that this day didn’t end up being a complete disaster. Unfortunately my pension is full for tomorrow night, so I can’t stay again, but I’m going to head to Santander and hopefully get away from this rain. Thanks Bilbao, you did a great job salvaging what could have been a completely horrible day!