Europe > Spain > Basque (Pais Vasco) > Bilbao > Arts and crafts > Articles > Lost in Bilbao

You might expect - and not unreasonably - that one of the most lauded architectural icons of the Millennium would be easily accessible to the hundreds of thousands of visitors who travel from far and wide to view the building as much as its contents.

You might expect it, but you wouldn’t get it. Coming at Bilbao from south west France, though, things look promising. As you hurtle down the highway, French and Spanish motorists 10 centimetres behind your rear end and moving at 120 kilometres plus, you’ve scarcely crossed the border before you see signs alongside the E70 autopista for the Guggenheim, all of 115 kilometres away.

Cherish the moment, though, because you won’t be seeing many more, and none at all as you enter the outskirts of the city.

For those travellers heading into Bilbao from its international ferry port at Santurtzi things are even worse i.e. no signs at all. This means that if you’ve made a last-minute decision to go all cultural and visit the Guggenheim en route to the surf of Biarritz - as I did on my last visit - you have to rely on guess work, the angle of the sun and which side of the trees the moss grows on to find this glass and titanium edifice.

My assumption was that we should simply follow signs for the city centre and all would be revealed, directions to the Guggenheim would be as plentiful and as welcoming as tapas bars, and we’d cruise into the museum’s car park with ease.

And indeed, it seemed at first that this theory would work well. Although there was nothing on the autopista to indicate at which junction I and co-driver Simon should exit, the hunch of going for the city centre looked good as the first of the veritable forest of Museo Guggenheim signs we knew we would encounter beckoned us. Being the morning rush hour this was doubly welcome as no one likes to negotiate a city as big as Bilbao unless they know exactly where they’re headed.

So, we shot off right, following the friendly brown sign, and expectantly eyed the horizon for its fellows, which, we knew, would guide us to our destination. And that was that - no more signs, anywhere. We drove past the railway station, around numerous large roundabouts, alongside the River Nervion (on the premise that since the museum is on the bank of said river all we need do is follow it to eventually reach our goal. The one-way system thought otherwise).

We negotiated narrow back alleys, sat at traffic lights, thought about pulling over and asking someone for directions until it occurred to us that neither of us spoke Spanish, and then found ourselves heading up the road we’d come into the city on. At this point Simon had a moment of inspiration. "Let’s get a map of the city!" That boy will go far.

So, back on the autopista, for that is where we were by now, we pulled over at a garage, bought said map and retraced our route into the city centre. Hey, this was easy now!

Soon the shining titanium flanks of the museum hove into view. Our route would take us straight past it, and so it did. We watched the Guggenheim slide gracefully past on our left and disappear behind us since the only sign to indicate the turn off to the museum was slightly larger than a postage stamp and consequently we missed it. Half a mile down the road we did a three point turn (not easy on a city centre street at 9.15 am) and retraced our route yet again.

We were on course now, following the postage stamp sign and heading straight for the museum. But where was the car park? Where were the signs? How naive. There were none, of course. In fact come to that there wasn’t a car park as such either, more of a development site with vehicles strewn about across it.

This we eventually negotiated our way into after only one wrong turn, then, after allowing a few minutes to release the pent-up pressure induced by Bilbao’s traffic planners, we emerged from our vehicle and passed a relaxing morning in this most outstanding building.

I particularly enjoyed the 50 or more motorcycles that featured in the ‘Art of the Motorcycle’ exhibition, although since these had been brought to the Guggenheim from all corners of the world I hate the think of how long it took their riders to get them there.

Next step, of course, was getting out of the city, but you don’t even want to know about that…

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