Being a vegetarian in Spain is not easy. That I do eat eggs and cheese makes life somewhat easier. Even then, there are only so many tortillas (Spanish omelettes) and only so much goat cheese I can handle in a day. I get around it by packing protein bars and a sense of humor.
I already knew that ham is a vegetable in France and Spain. Being served a "vegetable salad" that included a lump of canned tuna was a new one on me, especially since it came on the heels of a long conversation in broken Spanish during which I said, "solamente verduras" (only vegetables). What calories I lacked in protein I made up for in carbs and sugar. There were a few days where I went to sleep not feeling too well.
We'd be in Spain for only two more days before flying to London, where a pig is a pig, a fish is a fish, and a plant is a plant.
Signs in Barcelona appear in two languages: Catalan and Spanish. In more touristy areas the third would be English. Catalan is enough like French and Spanish that Jack and I could usually figure out what the signs meant. When we got to Bilbao, Catalan was replaced by Basque. Basque is unintelligible:
This is from an introduction to a cookbook.
The topiary dog is souvenir fodder. In full bloom, the greenery is covered in color.
A specialty beer shop stocked labels drawn by Ralph Steadman:
The street next to our hotel (which was across from the Guggenheim) had a view of mountains on one side and the museum on the other.
There were recycling bins every few blocks too (bottom right in the picture above).
The inside of the museum reminded me of the inside of the Perelman building at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Fair enough that HUP's architect echoes Gehry, but to me it evoked memories of MRIs and mammograms. This place has curves, though.
We saw the Claes Oldenburg exhibit. Anyone who has spent time in Philadelphia knows his enormous clothespin sculpture. Anyone who's been on Penn's Locust Walk has seen the broken button; anyone who's been a student there has played on it. Bilbao's exhibit was of his early work and soft sculptures. The soft sculptures were fun. As for the early work in cardboard, well, let's just say he improved with age.
The drawings of Egon Scheile were interesting in that I'd never heard of the guy before. The exhibit that was supposedly on modern interior architecture, which turned out to be about three colossal wastes of space, was a waste of time as well.
We had fun walking through the Richard Serra sculptures. The second one from the front, with its walls slanting in parallel, was disorienting. By the third sculpture we'd pretty much gotten his shtick.
It was raining as the sun set.
We spent about an hour at the nearby museum of fine arts, where we saw an exhibit of Fernando Botero's paintings. A one-word Botero summary: fat. Fat people, fat horses, fat, fat, fat. Comically fat. Beyond American fat.
From there we went back to the hotel. On the top floor is one of Bilbao's finest restaurants, and Jack wanted to eat there. Fortunately for me, the waiter understood what I meant when I said, "solamente verduras y quesos" (only vegetables and cheeses). He replied that I would have to have wild mushrooms, in season now, that the chef would gladly prepare for me. Jack ordered pigeon. Jack ate pigeon. I teased Jack about eating pigeon. Jack cooed like a pigeon. I texted my English friend, Mazz, who'd we'd be seeing soon, that Jack was eating pigeon. She replied that I should keep him out of Trafalgar Square.
Two days later, Jack and I were in Trafalgar Square. I kept an eye on him.
I don't tend to take many pictures in London. I've got three so far, all of bikes. I'll post them soon.
1 comment:
I like the dog topiary but I like real....moving dogs....like my two.
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