We got the last room in a little hotel that rocks, the Hotel Arriaga, in the Casco Viejo district. It had antique finished rooms, and a secured garage for the bikes. And it was a bargain for a big city, at about $60 a night. The innkeeper, a sweet older lady named Nieves, offered to do our laundry. We must've looked like we badly needed it!

Bilbao was my favorite big city. Bilbao is a city on the verge of transitioning from a beat-up, grimy shipbuilding and maritime centre of Spain, to a burgeoning hub of technology and design based commerce. After years of letting a dying resource-based economy kill off any hope for the future, the Basque Government is actively carrying out huge programs that have led to an economic reinaissance.

Yet, despite the boom, it's obvious that there are many, many people on the fringes of the resurgence. All one has to do is take a walk a few blooks in any direction out of the shiny streets of downtown, like we accidentally did. Just across the river from the Casco Viejo tourist section, there's a seedy, dank urban jungle where junkies, prostitutes, homeless people, and teenage Anarchist punks with pittbull dogs roam the streets. Here, Basque separatist graffitti is everywhere, and you get the uneasy sense that these people are pissed.Leave it to us to get lost there!

We spent two days in Bilbao, struggling with the Basque language, and checking out the Guggenheim's main exhibit, El Arte de Motocicletas, which was oh so appropriate! and the main reason why we rode to this colder end of the country instead of visiting the tourist-laden warm city of Barcelona, on the other side of the country. We also saw Cirque du Solei perform adjacent to the Guggenheim. Food was the absolute BEST that we encountered in all of Spain. We MUST go back!