Bilbao,

"Buono Estente,"

My girlfriend and I recently took a little trip to the Basque Country where I took a few too many photos, and may well have over-utilised the graduated neutral density filter ... who can tell? Perhaps you can in these photos from Bilbao ...

Upon arriving in Bilbao we climbed up to a church on a hill ...

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/owainshaw/87503​92111/
Subiendo a la Begona, Bilbao by Owain Shaw Photo, on Flickr

It was closed, so we went back down again to find something higher, and thus took the funicular to a nice vantage point above the city where you can see some of the beautiful countryside of Pais Vasco ...
IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/owainshaw/87515​12330/
Bilbao desde Funicular by Owain Shaw Photo, on Flickr

This is Basque Ball, it's like Squash but because the Basque's are tough, they play it with a hard ball and their bare hands ...
IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/owainshaw/87515​08262/
Balon Vasco, Bilbao by Owain Shaw Photo, on Flickr

We went to the Guggenheim, this is Ana being deliberately pretentious with some modern art ... it seemed like the best thing to do.
IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/owainshaw/87515​07278/
Guggenheim, Bilbao by Owain Shaw Photo, on Flickr

It was raining quite a lot whilst we were in Bilbao ...
IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/owainshaw/87503​82001/
Lluvia, Bilbao by Owain Shaw Photo, on Flickr

It stopped briefly to allow me to take a metric crap-tonne of photos of the Guggenheim ...
IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/owainshaw/87503​81819/
Guggenheim, Bilbao by Owain Shaw Photo, on Flickr
IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/owainshaw/87515​03518/
Guggenheim, Bilbao by Owain Shaw Photo, on Flickr

That night and the next day we had a look around the old town - initially comprised of three and later seven streets (of Rhye) ...
IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/owainshaw/87514​99308/
Casco Viejo, Bilbao by Owain Shaw Photo, on Flickr

There are many more in a Flickr set here and I'm also going to post a selection from San Sebastian, which was the next stage of our miniature-tour of the Basque Country ...

A sailor went to C, C, C to see what he could C, C,C but all that he could C, C, C was the bottom of the deep, blue C, C, C ...

Boutros, Boutros-Ghali,

Owain.