Bilbao

It is very difficult to be upset or angry with anyone or about anyone when the sun is shining, the air smells of green grass alternating with food, the sun-tanned legs of the scantily clad, flirty señoritas all around...

...but it did not start out that well and, frankly Bilbao teetered on the brink of damnation for quite some time. Firstly it was raining, secondly it was fiesta and, sadly they have learned rather too much from the Norwegians. That includes all the staff going on fiesta as well so there is nobody left to serve the drinks. They also seem to have acquired a taste for bacalao, a propensity for building silly bendy bridges and the perverse desire for a second, impenetrable, minority appeal language.

Of course, the main, almost only tourist reason for going to Bilbao is the famous Guggenheim museum, which rates right up there with all the other over-rated rip-offs of tourism.

"It looks like a ship...", yes and so do ships; your point being?

The art inside is so pretentious as to be beyond pretention. Sodding great slabs of rusty steel "containing space". Serra claims to be redefining sculpture; I think he is taking the piss. Appropriate that they are hosting a surrealist exhibition in the Museo de Bellas Artes. The whole town is surreal and some of the buildings in the new town are like something out of a neo-fascist movie.