The largest city along the Camino del Norte, Bilbao is a bustling metropolis with a world-famous art museum and world-class dining.
Featuring more amenities than most smaller towns on the Camino del Norte, it is definitely worth spending an extra day here to rest and explore the city. If your schedule allows for it, this is a logical spot to take a break and to buy any items you may have forgotten for your Camino adventure. Aside from more varied shops, it also offers more places to stay, as you will have to book a private hostel or hotel for the extra night, since it is technically not allowed to stay in an albergue for more than one night.
This rest day was mainly spent wandering the streets of Bilbao, popping in and out of cafés and dodging the heat. I won’t always cover rest days, but this is an important stop on the Camino del Norte. If this is the first post you’re reading, check out my intro article on the basic premise of the Camino de Santiago, or this page for all of my Camino de Santiago posts.
Waking up at my colleague’s apartment
After a good long sleep, I was feeling well rested but still a bit worn out. Even though it’s true that after hiking all day you can sleep just about anywhere, the sleep is never quite as restful as having a quiet space to yourself. By the time I woke up, my friend was long gone.
It took me a good ten minutes to figure out how his coffee machine worked, which I’ll chalk up to exhaustion. I didn’t quite have to resort to watching a YouTube tutorial, but it came pretty damn close. In my defense, I think someone else must have really struggled before me, because the plastic housing from the coffee pot was almost entirely melted on one side.
Aside from needing to catch up on sleep, it was also excessively hot, and I was hoping to enjoy the hiking rather than powering through it all. I was happy to have scheduled in plenty of extra days, and I’m glad that I took full advantage of them. Once I had eaten breakfast, washed my clothes, and hung them all up to dry, I made my way into the city center.
Meeting up with a friend of a friend from MSU
Walking about half a mile into one of the central neighborhoods, I met my friend’s friend at a small café. Another Michigan State alum, she also used to teach English in Spain, and just happened to be back visiting for a month. We got to know each other over cake and coffee, and stayed in the cool café for a few hours, dodging the heat and chatting.
It was nice to meet up with another American, because I had met very few over the first week of this hike. I found that the end had significantly more, but it seems like few Americans have enough vacation time to hike the entire Camino from France.
The temperatures were in the high 90s still (33+ Celsius), and it was brutally humid out. After having our fill of coffee, we wandered out for a stroll around the city to take some pictures.
Dodging the heat in downtown Bilbao
The city was quieter than usual, with most people preferring to stay indoors or sitting on shady, covered terraces. Bilbao has gone through a significant clean-up effort over the last 30 to 40 years, and it really shows.
This river was once highly polluted from the industry in the area, and full of ships carrying coal and iron ore. Through a decades long effort to clean up downtown, it is now significantly less polluted and suitable for recreation. I’m not sure that I’d want to swim in it, but I’d consider kayaking along it.
As the day slowly cooled off, people went about their business, and enjoyed drinks out on shaded patios.
The picture above perfectly sums up much of Bilbao; beautiful architecture with a bit of graffiti on it, and a flyer pasted over the top of it advertising a Basque liberation rally.
I have to say, one of my favorite aspects about the Camino is how safe the whole thing feels. Even though we walked through many different parts of downtown, I never really felt unsafe.
Plaza Nueva and the Euskaltzaindia building
People walk through Plaza Nueva, a monumental square in downtown Bilbao. The building pictured in the center of the scene is the Euskaltzaindia, the center for the regulatory body for the Basque Language. As modern Basque is a standardized language, this language institute plays an important role in regulating the official rules around things like spelling and correct grammar.
In a lot of ways, the work that was done in this institute in the 1960s is responsible for preserving Basque as a language. Aside from the fact that Basque was not allowed to be used as an official language during Franco’s reign, the Basque language was also highly fragmented because of the geographic isolation of its speakers. Between the widely varied Basque dialects and the influx of industrial workers from the rest of Spain into Bilbao, Basque was an endangered language on its way to extinction until the unification of norms. Even after unifying the Basque language with a standardized dialect, it is still considered “at-risk” according to UNESCO, and “severely endangered” in the Basque-speaking regions in France.
On cooler days, this plaza is generally full of people sitting out having drinks and eating. During the cold winter months, the palm trees serve as a reminder that even though it might be cold and rainy at times, it rarely drops below freezing here.
Guggenheim Museum
Probably the most famous attraction in Bilbao, the Guggenheim Museum of modern art sits right at the heart of the city. Having already visited the museum a few times, I opted out of the tour. But for any pilgrims stopping in Bilbao for the first time on their pilgrimage, this museum is a must-see.
I have always said that it’s a tall order to live up to the extravagant architecture of the building, and for me the art inside has never quite matched the beauty of the building. If you’re walking the Camino on a tight budget, or don’t have time to spend an extra day in Bilbao, you can certainly get away with just walking around it. My new friend and I sat outside of a bar for a while right beside the Guggenheim that had live jazz on its back patio, which was a great way to enjoy some culture without spending money on museum admission.
Final thoughts
After covering roughly 100 miles (161km) from Irun to Bilbao, I felt like I was finally getting the hang of things. Walking around Bilbao with a new friend was a great way to spend the rest day. I ate some good food, took some pictures, and got to stretch my legs out without the burden of a heavy pack.
If you’re a language nerd like I am, you might also be interested in reading a bit about Standard, or ‘united’ Basque, which essentially created a distilled version of all of the mutually intelligible parts of Basque dialects to create a version that every Basque-speaker could understand. This effort created the modern dialect of Basque most widely spoken today, which helped give the language a fighting chance for survival, and a new level of prestige.
To see all of my 2022 Camino posts and hop between sections, check the main Camino page.
Drop any questions or comments down below, and as always, ¡Buen Camino!
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