Bilbao and Tex Perkins

Arived in Bilbao on Sunday night pouring with rain. Discovered our hostel was well on the outskirts of town and so had our first night in.

Easter Monday in Bilbao was a ghost town. Hardly anyone about and most of the bars and places to eat were closed. Bit of a dissapointment after the edible delights of Sans Sebastian. Shitty hostel beds gave Simon a really bad back which meant I spent most of the day trying to drag him around town, not there was much to see anyway. Decided to head back to the hostel and have another evening of rest. Dragged the mattress of the bed onto the floor so Simon could get a better rest.

Tuesday morning Simon's back somewhat better so we tackle our main reason for coming here - The Guggenheim. A fabulous building of curved titanium tiles sitting next to the river. Inside went to their long gallery on the ground floor, apparenty longer than a football pitch. The room was filled with gigantic steel sculptures formed into metal mazes with the perspective changing curving towards or away from you as you walk into it, messing with your perception of space, light and sound. Simon couldn't resist an Aussie "Coo-Eee".

We were a bit dissapointed that the permanent Guggenheim exhibition was quite small with most of the gallery space given away to a Russian Exhibition. However this was bloody fantastic too with lots of Soviet era paintings, Kanidinsky and then some weird modernist stuff amongst others. One of our favourites was a video of Lenin turning in his grave.

It was in the weird modernist section that I clocked the face (and body) of someone familiar. Tex Perkins. Australina Rock Legend Sex God!!! I took a sharp intake of breath and hurried of to find Simon who verrified it was actually him. We had read that Beasts of Bourbon are playing around Spain this month. Shaking too much to be brave enough to approach him myself I got Simon to do my dirty work. He approached introduced himself which allowed me to nervously smile and shake his hand too. I'm not washing for a week! Looked at some other stuff after that but can cause I was too excited about Tex. So a dissapointing start to Bilbao but a bloody fantastic end!

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