With about an hour to go before we needed to be back at the coach we decided to prioritise grabbing a drink (preferably something local) in a bar. Figuring that the majority of drinking establishments would be close to the cathedral and main square, Praza da Obradoiro, we headed roughly back in the same direction we’d originally come. There were definitely more signs of life in the city than we’d seen earlier in the day although we didn’t spot anything too enticing at first.

We eventually came upon Praza de Cervantes, a stretched town square surrounded by shops and bars and with a fountain containing a bust of the aforementioned Cervantes himself atop a pillar.

The most prominent building around the square’s exterior was the Church of San Martiño Pinario, most notable for its bell tower under normal circumstances I’d imagine but mostly drawn to our attention by the low stage for musicians that had been set up in front.

Being deductive souls we reckoned there might be some form of performance about to start and keen to see what it might be but also still sate our thirst we settled our eyes on a bar on the corner of the street heading southwards away from the square. This turned out to be a place called Cafe Pub Agarimo. Entering, we found ourselves in a long, narrow room with a bar along one side. We caught the attention of one of the staff and with some pointing at the taps we asked for a beer and a cider. The Cafe Pub Agarimo was doing tapas which we hadn’t realised so there was a moment of confusion as we looked at the bowls of soup that arrived first before we realised everyone was getting them. There was no request for payment so we took our beer and soup into a cramped backroom of the bar that did at least have seats and tables.

We hadn’t been hungry but the soup was simple yet satisfying. We think it was probably a Galician white bean soup with chorizo. I can’t say the drinks we had were anything special but when we’re drinking abroad it’s as much for the experience as it is for the taste. We’d spotted a member of staff going around some of the tables and collecting cash and returning change which led us to believe we’d soon be able to pay for our drinks and surprise lunch but by the time we wanted to leave we still hadn’t been seen to. I decided to pay at the bar on the way out but as we’d been drinking the bar area had filled to standing room only capacity. It took around ten minutes to get “served” in order to actually pay and it would have been insanely easy to leave without doing so, but we are not that sort of people. We’d not checked the prices before ordering our imbibements but they were very well-priced, especially when you consider the included tapas. So, I can definitely recommend Cafe Pub Agarimo but with the caution that if you’re in a hurry to be anywhere keep an eye on how busy the place is and pay as soon as you can.

Back outside we found that Praza de Cervantes had also filled up and the musicians were playing.

The festival was part of the Ascensión Festivities, a yearly event, with us having turned up on the second day. We stood around enjoying the ambience, listening to the music, and firing off a few shots of the people doing likewise for several minutes.

We like a good excuse to drink in the sunshine and listen to bands performing but we were starting to run short of time in Santiago de Compostela so our next task was to hunt down a souvenir shop. This was not a difficult thing to do as you probably could have guessed and we bypassed half a dozen or more before selecting one at random. Mugs, a bookmark, and a shot glass were all picked up for a surprisingly low price although we steered clear of anything with the ubiquitous shell design on it that you’ll typically find hard to escape in the Spanish city.

As we approached the main square from the south we happened upon a nice little square – Praza de Fonseca – with some greenery in it, a little unexpected oasis from the sparse streets and alleys we’d encountered elsewhere throughout the city.

Back in Praza do Obradoiro we spent a short period of time taking a few more photos of the impressive buildings around it including the town hall and cathedral’s western façade. It was particularly interesting to see the number of people, many of whom had probably completed the Camino pilgrimage, simply sitting around, some in contemplation, some in conversation.

It was about time to leave by now, though, so exiting through the north side of the main square of Santiago de Compostela along Rua de San Francisco and towards the church and convent of the same saint we made our way back towards where the coach had dropped us off at Parking Xoán XXIII.

I had just enough time to get sidetracked after spotting some street art near the coach pick-up spot. Though the artwork was more stylised tagging than imagery it was all still of a very good quality.

This concludes our cruise excursion from the Sapphire Princess into Santiago de Compostela. The medieval city was better than we’d expected partly because we came away feeling unfleeced. There’s often a sense when travelling – especially if you’re hitting obvious tourist hotspots – that the prices are inflated and the stuff being peddled is pretty awful but Santiago de Compostela didn’t have any of that; it felt like a generous, trusting, honest place befitting its religious heritage. Very cheap to spend time there and with far more to see than we had time to during our half day it’s a city I’d have no qualms about visiting again or recommending.

As I’ve said in the previous post, the Museo do Pobo Galego (Museum of the Galician People) is roughly fifteen minutes walk northeast from the cathedral or main square of Santiago de Compostela. The building that the museum now occupies has had many roles over the years; originally the convent of San Domingos de Bonaval and the work of the 17th century architect Domingo de Andrade then a regimental barracks, a hospice, and a school for the deaf and blind it wasn’t until 1993 that the museum was officially opened. In order to promote what the region considers its greatest creation – its language – all the signs inside the Museo do Pobo Galego are in Galician although English explanatory texts are available.

The first thing to note about visiting this museum is that it’s closed on Mondays. Not a problem for us (obviously, otherwise this post would be ending right about now) but worth bearing in mind depending on the timing and length of your trip to the Santiago de Compostela area. The second thing to note is that, like many Spanish establishments, it has a siesta period so don’t come between 14:00 and 16:00 on days when it’s open and, as you probably could guess because you’re smart, don’t come just before 14:00 either or you won’t have any time to look around.

General admission price is just €3 and an absolute bargain. With that you’ll get a fold-out map to help you explore the building.

Now, the Museo do Pobo Galego does have a lot of interesting rooms with a lot of interesting exhibits around specific themes (e.g. the Galician relationship with the sea, how trade was conducted in the region, music heritage, folk traditions, etc.) but the thing that had caught our eye during our pre-cruise research and the thing that we immediately made for was the main staircase linking the three levels of the museum. That may seem odd in writing but as you can see from the photo below it’s quite a special staircase: a triple helical set of stairs spirals up with exits to different floors of the tower in which it’s situated. It’s a dizzying sight to see and not the easiest thing in the world to photograph as the light from the top really plays havoc with the relative dimness down below but you’ll find it hard to resist anyway.

Pick the correct set of steps and you can make it all the way to the top where you’re rewarded with a view down to the ground floor and out through a window looking back towards Santiago de Compostela’s Old Town and the prominent towers of the cathedral.

After recovering from the exertion of climbing the triple helical staircase in the museum we took a leisurely walk through the various rooms across the floors. You can expect to see artwork, pottery, printing equipment, photographs, farming equipment, religious artefacts, traditional folk costumes, and so on. There was a school group visiting the museum while we were there so I didn’t take very many photos in the exhibition rooms at all (some people can be a bit funny about adults with cameras around children and it’s never worth the hassle of risking confrontation) but what we saw was very interesting and you really didn’t need to understand Galician to get the gist of what was being displayed.

It’s easy to forget the history of the building itself as you explore the rooms of the museum until you suddenly find yourself looking down on the San Domingos Church from a first floor gantry. Weirdly, because you don’t enter the church from a doorway on the ground floor this has the effect of making it feel like the church is another exhibit, perhaps one transported and stored inside a huge room in the museum specifically for the purpose. It’s a pleasingly disconcerting experience. The main body of the church dates from the 13th and 14th centuries so was in position with the convent area long before the architecture of the surrounding buildings were added.

The museum visit took a little more time than we were initially expecting, not just because there was a lot to see but also because there’s a section of the ground floor that can only be accessed from the first floor. This also means the only way to get out after you’ve explored this section is to get back to the first floor again, something we didn’t realise until we’d exhausted every route and tried every door. It’s actually quite clear from looking at the map now but at the time it threw us for a bit.

We finished up our visit to the Museo do Pobo Galego in the very attractive courtyard surrounded by the beautifully-arched porticoes. After the quite minimalist interior of the museum it was refreshing to step into the vibrancy of the greenery and gaze up at the blue skies. It’s a lovely little area to just breathe in, gaze around, and relax, and if you’re visiting with other people who want to use the toilet it’s an ideal place to wait for them while they do so as the restroom facilities are just through one of the arches.

If you’re visiting Santiago de Compostela and you’ve got the time to do so then the Museo do Pobo Galego is worth every cent of the very small entrance fee and highly recommended if only to see the impressive design of the staircase.

We would use the remainder of our time in the Galician city to hunt down some souvenirs and grab a bite to eat along with something to drink and that’s covered in the final part of our cruise excursion account.

It is, of course, possible to make your own way from the port to the city of Santiago de Compostela if you’re arriving on a cruise but it should be noted that the travel time by coach is around 45-60 minutes depending on traffic so you’re not exactly near the ship if you run into any difficulties with public transport. Some other people we know who were visiting the city on another cruise ship after us had originally planned to use the train until they discovered that there was a large gap in the schedule that might have made getting back on time a risk. We elected to pick an excursion arranged through Princess Cruises that simply took care of taking us to the city and getting us back with a guide explaining the history of the area while travelling but leaving us free to explore on our own for several hours on arrival, all safe in the knowledge that the ship would wait for us. When excursions are reasonably priced we will always err towards them rather than trying to save a few quid when we’re already paying as much as we are for the cruise anyway.

Our coach drop-off and pick-up point was at Parking Xoán XXIII which is just to the north of the Convento de San Francisco de Santiago, itself just to the north of the medieval centre of Santiago de Compostela if you’re looking for it on a map. A five-minute walk took us into the main square.

The main square in Santiago de Compostela’s Old Town area is called the Praza do Obradoiro. The buildings surrounding it look fabulous architecturally with the most prominent ones being to the western and eastern sides of the square, the city hall and the façade of the cathedral respectively. The cathedral, as you’re probably aware, is the main draw for people visiting Santiago de Compostela, either as tourists or as the 100,000+ pilgrims completing the Camino de Santiago (Way of Saint James) pilgrimage each year.

From Wikipedia:

According to medieval legend, the remains of the apostle James were brought to Galicia for burial; in 813, the light of a bright star guided a shepherd who was watching his flock at night to the burial site in Santiago de Compostela. […] To honour St. James, the cathedral was built on the spot where his remains were said to have been found. The legend, which included numerous miraculous events, enabled the Catholic faithful to bolster support for their stronghold in northern Spain during the Christian crusades against the Moors, but also led to the growth and development of the city.

If you’re standing in the Praza do Obradoiro and want to enter the impressive-looking (even with the scaffolding during our visit) cathedral the best approach is to walk out of the square via the alley to the southeast then immediately turn left along the southernmost face of the building. The entrance is up a flight of steps in the Praza das Praterías. Entry to the cathedral is free but it’s worth checking to see if there are any planned church services as this will affect your visit. It is possible to pay for a rooftop tour as well but despite the warm-looking photos there was a bitterly cold wind on the day of our visit (you might have noticed if you’ve watched the video) and we’d foolishly only worn t-shirts; we decided the roof can wait until we return, should that happen.

Construction of the present Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, one of the largest cathedrals in Europe, began in the late 11th century. Almost 100 metres long it has a classically-arranged cruciform-shaped interior and the most eye-catching elements are the gold choir area and organ as well as the large, hanging censer (the Botafumeiro, the largest censer in the world) used to dispense burning incense to the congregation when pulled by eight tiraboleiros. The cathedral seats were pretty full when we arrived as it was approaching the time for a mass to begin. We spoke after our visit with some fellow cruise passengers who had come on the excursion with us and they had spent nearly their full time sat in the cathedral, the reason being that they were hoping to see the censer swung. This didn’t happen but the reason for that – had they been paying attention to our guide on the coach – was that it’s only done on special occasions (and this wasn’t one) or if a pilgrim makes a very sizeable donation to have the ceremony performed (and, clearly, one didn’t).

We had no interest in actually attending the upcoming mass and so, like many other visitors, completed a cross-shaped circuit of the cathedral, taking photos of some of the more interesting details to the backdrop of the general low murmur of people talking, only occasionally broken up by a voice over a speaker reminding people to be silent. There were a couple of areas you could queue for a short period to walk through that took you to a higher view down the nave of the church as well as down a few steps into the crypt housing the relics of Saint James and two of his disciples; photography was tricky in both these areas on account of the general crush of people constantly moving through them.

Leaving the cathedral through the gift shop (naturally) we emerged back into the streets of Santiago de Compostela in Praza da Quintana on the eastern side of the building. This gave us a chance to take a quick scan around at the various landmarks in view, notably the main towers of the cathedral (the Clock Tower and the Treasure Tower with its seemingly out-of-place pyramidal top) while we got our bearings and consulted our maps to work out the route to our next destination.

If we’re going to have enough free time to explore a place when we’re travelling – as opposed to taking an excursion that effectively eats up all the time we’re present – then we research the area beforehand and typically have a not-cast-in-stone idea of what we might want to see. It’s only a wish list and we’re flexible enough to bend with whatever the weather or surprises on the day may throw at us but we do try to make sure that there’s at least something on it that’s not provided on any of the offered tours. There’s something special about visiting a place and not only seeing the obvious, big tourist elements but also something potentially unique amongst the people you’re with if only to give you something different to talk about. On this trip to Santiago de Compostela we’d spotted an interesting-looking museum just to the northeast of the Old Town called Museo do Pobo Galego (about fifteen minutes away on foot from the cathedral) and with plenty of time in hand it was in this direction that we set off.

One of the first buildings we passed was a monastery – the Mosteiro de San Paio de Antealtares – which had a small window through which it was possible to buy cakes off nuns. We decided we didn’t need any cakes and I thought it best out of respect not to take any photos of this event taking place but it did make us smile and if you’re after a cake baked by a nun I’ve got nowhere else I could possibly recommend. Being still fairly early in the day – not quite noon at this point – the narrow streets were mostly empty and many of the places we walked past that could possibly have been restaurants or bars were closed up but there were enough interesting-looking buildings or statues to keep my camera-finger happy.

It was fairly easy to spot when we’d emerged from the Old Town of Santiago de Compostela as the architecture suddenly modernised a little and traffic suddenly appeared on roads. Still bearing roughly northeast we crossed over the Rúa da Virxe da Cerca and headed up the slight incline of the Costa de San Domingos towards the largest building in view which was our destination, the museum. To the left of it as we approached there was a delightfully modernist structure suitably housing contemporary art. We talked about visiting it after the museum but as it turned out we spent longer there than planned so decided to pass on it this time around.

The second post of our cruise excursion in Santiago de Compostela will cover our visit to the Museo do Pobo Galego (museum of the Galician people).

It’s probably not inaccurate to say that the majority of people on a cruise probably don’t find commercial and industrial ports that interesting to look at (very experienced cruisers on the larger ships probably see enough of them to erase them from their memories for the most part). I am most definitely in the minority, loving the brute strength that this scale of industrialisation represents and finding much of the functional design fantastically attractive, and I’ll usually make sure I’m out for a look at the port as whatever ship we’re on is arriving or leaving.

This post, then, is merely a collection of the photos and a short piece of video taken from the Sapphire Princess cruise ship as she was entering and leaving A Coruña in May 2018. The dome structure seen in the photos stored coal for processing and was not an arena for entertaining the mutants who survived the apocalypse. But it might be one day.

Part of any possible future visit to the port of A Coruña looks to be the 16th-century fortress, now museum, Museo Arqueolóxico e Histórico Castelo de Santo Antón, apparently open from 10:00 on most days and only a couple of Euros entrance fee.

From a distance the most obvious sight of new development is the Iberdrolar Tower (architect: César Pelli) but the place we’d come to see – indeed, probably, most tourists come to see – was the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum. It really was designed that way and isn’t the result of a too-proud architect refusing to acknowledge he shouldn’t have built his prototype model from chocolate and left it on the parcel shelf in the back of his car on a sunny day.

Our tour group was met by a second guide and split into two outside the entrance to make it easier to take us through the museum. The actual process of getting into the museum was very easy and although we’d been warned about not taking in large bags the checking of these did not look too stringent to me; indeed, the space in the museum is so vast it’s arguable that any large bags would really get in the way at all but you should be prepared to surrender them just to be on the safe side, especially if the museum is very busy or if you want to chance your arm and wheel a suitcase in. Single adult tickets bought online at time of writing this are €16. We gathered in the inner atrium (after another long wait for people to use the toilet, naturally), a space Gehry nicknamed “The Flower” due to its shape and the only interior location of the museum that permits photography.

The angles and sweeping curves of the interior reflected a lot of the design of the exterior of the Guggenheim Museum though with understandably different materials in play. The prominence of white and huge windows in the atrium that looked down to the river and allowed in light also brought in some of that external material – the titanium sheets – allowing us to touch them. The titanium was chosen so that it would change appearance as it aged – “Yo, Gehry, what’s with the weird colouring?” “Er, yeah, no, er, I meant that” – and the overall shape of the building was generally just random although many critics see waves and ships or fishes or melted chocolate in the back of cars in the design.

A criticism of this point in the cruise excursion, though, is that we spent an awful lot of time in the atrium hearing the history of the area and the building, the materials, the design choices, the critics’ views, etc. While a lovely place and a very informative talk from a very knowledgeable guide the things we’d really come to see were the exhibits. Revisiting my argument from the walking tour of Bilbao portion of this organised trip, had the two elements been reversed in the order in which they were undertaken we could have heard this history on the coach on the approach to the Guggenheim Museum giving us extra time to see what it was housing.

Stepping through a doorway off the atrium opposite the entrance we emerged out onto a concrete balcony in the outside air where we could get up close to Tulips by Jeff Koons. From the official website description:

Tulips, a bouquet of multicolor balloon flowers blown up to gargantuan proportions (more than 2 meters tall and 5 meters across), belongs to the ambitious Celebration series, initiated by Koons in 1994. […] With its immaculate, reflective stainless-steel surfaces, Tulips recalls earlier works by the artist such as Rabbit (1986), which similarly transformed a banal inflatable object into something hard, gleaming, and iconic. In Tulips and in the balloon animals that populate the Celebration series, as in his towering Puppy (1992), Koons has manipulated scale, as well as materials, to uncanny ends. While Tulips might evoke the large industrial forms of certain Minimalist sculptures, the buoyant, colorful sculpture equally brings to mind a jaunty parade float.

One of Koons’s other creations, Puppy, referenced in the quote above was present near the entrance to the Guggenheim but was covered in scaffolding for repairs and subsequently not photographed.

Back inside we next went into the largest space on the ground floor, the Arcelor Gallery (formerly the Fish Gallery), housing the permanent exhibition piece The Matter of Time by the sculptor Richard Serra. This was a strangely compelling, fun, if arguably disturbing place and I wish we’d had more time (ironically) here. The cavernous space is host to several, weathered steel constructions arranged in spirals or waving lines or numerous other configurations that you can wander through. Our guide took us through one which simply spiralled in on itself but the distance between the walls of the spiralled steel varied and the inward- or outward-leaning angles of the walls of the free-standing structure varied too as you moved into the sculpture’s interior; the effect was disconcerting with feelings that perhaps you were walking at an angle or that the space was confining or expanding and, overall, a loss of sense of just how far or even how long you’d walked before reaching the central space. It’s not just a must-see exhibit, it’s a must-experience one.

The following photo comes from The Matter of Time works page on the Guggenheim’s website just to show you the sculptures from above.

After an all-too-brief visit to the permanent exhibition we were taken through the other rooms of the Guggenheim Museum to see what they were showcasing. One Hundred and Fifty Multicolored Marilyns by Andy Warhol was a very obvious eye-catching piece but there were some works by Jean-Michel Basquiat I quite liked too. Museum employees were kept busy stepping up to remind people not to take photographs (it’s funny how often museum and gallery visitors seem to forget rules) but you can see many of the works at the museum’s site here: Works in the Collection.

With the rooms quickly gone through we were then given some free time before we’d need to meet back at the coach for the return to the cruise ship. We decided that rather than see some of the artwork in more detail we would head outside as the time left didn’t really leave a lot to meaningfully look at anything and we fancied some photographs of the building from a number of angles as it is such an attractive design. It was at this point that we overhead a group of Americans in our tour group grumbling that they hadn’t seen “any real art” and that they didn’t realise it was going to be full of “that modern rubbish.” People, eh? It’s always advisable to do a little bit of research before booking an excursion.

There were two prominent sculpture pieces outside the Guggenheim Museum. The first of these was Anish Kapoor‘s Tall Tree & The Eye consisting of 73 highly-reflective, stainless steel balls. This proved to be popular with people posing in front of it and I happily grabbed someone doing just that.

The second work was the almost 9-metre high, disturbing, spider creation, Maman by Louise Bourgeois. The name of the piece comes from its creation as a tribute to the sculptor’s mother who was herself a weaver. It’s a beautifully eerie work and my only regret is that the weather wasn’t ideal for capturing nice pictures of it.

But, of course, the majority of photos taken were of the Guggenheim Museum itself. Under clear skies and sunshine I imagine the change in colour tones as the light reflects off the undulating titanium exterior would be absolutely enchanting and I’d love to return for an early evening in summer at some point just to see how the tone would warm. A fabulous bit of architecture that barely looked like melted chocolate at all now I think about it.

We would have preferred a lot more time at the Guggenheim in retrospect so I’m not sure that this particular excursion is one that I can recommend if you’re keen on architecture and art. If we were to return to Bilbao at some point then we’d consider simply coming to the museum and spending a lot more time on just it rather than try to cram too much into a short trip as we unfortunately did this time around. That’s the gamble, though, and we always look at these excursions – and, indeed, cruises in general – as taster trips to whet our appetites for a return visit.

Getxo

The first thing to note about visiting Bilbao on a cruise ship is that the terminal is located in Getxo, around fifteen kilometres to the north of the heart of the city. The cruise port provides free shuttles into Getxo from where it’s fairly easy to use public transport into Bilbao (the metro system seemingly the most convenient) and it’s likely that Princess were running a service into the city from the port although I don’t know this for certain and don’t know the pricing as it’s not something we needed to worry about. Getxo looked like a pretty nice place from what we saw as we drove through it; it’s probably worth a look around on its own if you’re visiting this particular port on more than one occasion if only for the Vizcaya Bridge that we saw in operation from the coach windows as we made our way along the bank of the Nervión river to our destination.

Bilbao

The coach drop-off point for our walking tour of Bilbao was beside El Arenal park, a short distance from the Catholic church of Saint Nicolás, an 18th-century building in Baroque style built to honour the patron saint of sailors and apparently a meeting point for sailors before they would set off to sea. Sadly, we wouldn’t be entering any buildings during this walking tour because of the relatively short amount of time in the city so we never got to see its octagonal-shaped interior.

El Arenal park has a number of public toilets and this produced the first irritation in a number that would diminish the enjoyment of this particular cruise excursion. It really hadn’t been that long since we’d got off the Sapphire Princess (a little over half an hour maybe) but around a quarter of our coach apparently needed to go to the loo. Now, I know that some people may have bladder problems so this in itself wouldn’t be that big a deal except we weren’t the only coach that had parked up and the number of people from the various vehicles far exceeded the number of cubicles. Again, just one of those things that happens with scheduling so it shouldn’t be that annoying except two women in our group managed to be last in the queue or fell asleep in the toilets or had a really long chat or something. Whatever it was meant that the rest of us stood around for over twenty minutes before they casually wandered back to us and we could set off. On what was a fairly short excursion anyway this was a large amount of time to lose and, in fact, it meant that at the conclusion of our walking tour of Bilbao we were only left with about fifteen minutes of free time; not enough to really do anything.

Our visit to the Basque city coincided with Heineken promoting rugby and a festival due to take place in the park. We wouldn’t be around for any of that, though.

We were then led into the narrow streets of the old town of Bilbao by our very knowledgeable guide. While generally of the same style of architecture the various, often colourful facades of the tall buildings in this part of the city lent everything a nicely eclectic look and there were some lovely little stonework touches on some of the buildings, some of them no doubt very old indeed. The weather, unfortunately, wasn’t the best it could be from a photographic perspective; a uniform blanket of white cloud over a confined, dark area of streets does not make for the most attractive of pictures. Still, these old town layouts always have that sense of casual evolution over their curving, wandering routes rather than something designed which gives them a lovely feel when you’re strolling through them.

You might notice that a lot of the photos I took as we walked through Bilbao are quite elevated. Generally, I like to grab photos with people in them as they add life and scale to the pictures but the tendency towards angled-up shots boils down to the second irritation, that being one of the order in which the two aspects of the excursion took place. As I’ve said already, there were two parts to this trip: the museum visit and the walking tour. It would have been far better for the museum to have been the first stop rather than the order in which it was done for a very simple but quite important reason if you’re thinking of coming to the city: trucks and vans are permitted in the narrow town streets up until 11:00 in the morning in order to load and unload goods for the shops. What this amounted to for us was rather than a pleasant stroll through a pedestrianised section of the historical part of Bilbao learning its history we were instead often pressed up against buildings as vans rumbled past, occasionally struggled to hear anything over idling engines or the sound of tailgates lowering crates, and generally presented with little sight of the allegedly interesting buildings due to trucks parked in front of them. Just as our walking tour came to an end so all the vehicles disappeared from the streets; had we visited this after the museum it would have been far more enjoyable. Due to the relatively short distance between the Guggenheim and the old town there really didn’t seem to be much of a logistical reason why this tour sequence couldn’t have been swapped around and that was the feedback I provided to Princess.

Built in the 14th century and originally just a church, Santiago Cathedral proved an interesting stop for us as the final port on our cruise would be Santiago de Compostela, both places being named for Saint James as part of the pilgrimage route across the north of Spain.

The final gathering point – thankfully vehicle-free – was Plaza Nueva, a large and attractive square built in the 19th century and surrounded by arched, covered walkways housing plenty of shops and restaurants. One of the main buildings was the seat of the regional government until a new location was built specifically for the purpose and the square now often hosts tournaments or festivals.

With a look at her watch our tour guide then told us we had a quarter of an hour to explore on our own before meeting back at the coach. This just wasn’t anywhere near enough time to do anything of note so we headed immediately out of the old town area and down past the theatre to the river’s edge to grab a few photos of something rather lovely-looking we’d spotted on our way in: the Santander-Bilbao Concordia train station. Specifically, what had grabbed my eye was the gorgeous art nouveau design by Severino Achúcarro dating to the turn of the 20th century. Some of Achúcarro’s design work had also made it onto the facade of the cathedral so this rounded off our short exploration of Bilbao quite nicely.

Photos taken we made our way back to the coach and then sat around for a further ten minutes after our due departure time waiting for two women to stroll back late without so much as an apology for eating into what would be our museum-visiting time. Would it surprise you to know that it was the same two women who we’d had to wait twenty minutes for at the start of the walking tour? No, no it probably wouldn’t.

The walking tour of Bilbao could definitely have been better arranged and we had some bad luck in having two somewhat selfish fellow tourists along with us. The streets of the old town felt like there was more there to discover with a bit more time and we’d love to go back at some point to do just that but we were, in the end, a bit disappointed with this portion of this cruise excursion.