On Thursday, I was reminded of the bit in The Truman Show where the producers artificially engineer a storm to prevent him from escaping the set. Just as we were queuing to get on the plane, the heavens opened. Would we ever leave the Basque Country?
The day before a hurricane in the region meant, after a 6 hour delay, our flight was cancelled. The whole airport was gripped by FlightRadar, watching the planes circle like they were on a Scalextric before deciding, no, they wouldn’t land.
Rumours swirled that the airline had abandoned us. The next available plane was on Monday, 5 days away. I checked the Skyscanner app recommended flying to Tenerife then Lanzarote then back to Edinburgh. A mere 27 hours of travel. In the end, we managed to fly out of Biarritz.
Bilbao is by now so familiar to me that I sometimes find myself exercising my absolute worst habit: texting (or even reading) while walking. I looked up on one of these walks and discovered I’d almost missed seeing the Guggenheim. Ooops.
But, as ever, it was a joy to be there. Here is Juan Jose celebrating some good news with a cigar.
It’s such a clean city. They even sweep the river for leaves.
There has been a lot of debate around the future of Glasgow since Dani Garavelli’s superb article in The Bell. But no one seems clear on what the future should look like.
Bilbao provides a good model, I think. It is a dense, walkable city that takes pride in its appearance.
Back in Glasgow, there was not much of a queue for gelato on a wet October evening. Hopefully it’s not the start of a new ice cream war.
The raindrops and the blur in the first black and white photograph is lovely!