Arrival in Bilbao

Woke up this morning before the sun, in an enormous bed in a hotel in Madrid. After taking the bus to the airport with the rest of the program, M and I took the subway from the airport back into the city. And then we walked around Madrid for *hours* trying to find the damn bus station that ran buses to the north of Spain. We ended up at the bus station on the entirely wrong end of town, and nearly ended up going to Valencia (of the tasty oranges) rather than Bilbao (of the Guggenheim museum).

So a five hour bus ride later, we've gotten to Bilbao and settled into the hostel. M and I have a quite nice six-person room to the two of us, since it's definitely off-season for this part of the country. I jumped at the chance to wash all my clothes so there's a little tent city going on in the room right now.

I'm very glad M's on this leg of the trip with me, since she's an extra pair of eyes to look for signs and other important things, and keeps me from having to sit next to sketchy people on buses and such. She also saves food money the same way I do, by buying from a supermarket rather than a restaurant. For dinner we bought 6.10 euros worth of food for the two of us and that was more than enough. She also introduced me to chorizo, which is this kind of long, skinny sausage-ish tube of pepperoni-like cured ham. It is salty and fatty and deliciousness incarnate (no pun intended ;)

However, the hostel being nice and clean doesn't mean that the clientele isn't slightly sketchy. I *think* I got hit on earlier tonight while I was writing postcards, but I'm still not entirely sure. I was writing on a table in the empty dining room, and a guy came over from a birthday party in the other room. He sat down and introduced himself as Luis from Chile, hospitality student here to study as a chef. We talked a bit about Spain and where we each came from, then he asked me what floor I was staying on. I didn't want to tell him where I was sleeping, so I picked a random floor and said the fifth. Turns out that's his floor and he immediately asked me which room I was in ... awwwwkward. >_>;;;;; Later he came back and complimented me on my smile and asked me if I liked to dance ... *sigh* if it hadn't been 2:30 in the morning and I hadn't been ready to keel over from exhaustion, I might actually have taken him up on that. Maybe.

Tomorrow we're going to the Guggenheim museum, and probably doing somemore wandering around the city. The 20th there's a big traditional celebration of some sort, historically it was the day the tenant peasants would pay their landlords. These days it's more of a gathering of food, beer and artisan crafty things. And then we're taking the midnight bus back to Madrid to save on a night of board ... 13ish euros a night is fairly cheap, but it still adds up!