Honesty, Ono and Osos

I read somewhere that when travelling abroad, around about the three month mark one gets a little homesick. In my own experience, this has been true - you hit some weird slump where you'd just rather be back in your own home (in spite of all the amazing around you), surrounded by your own stuff, food and friends.

Maybe it's a coincidence that it's about that three month mark... or maybe it's because we've really slowed down, given the Man of the House (MOTH) a break from daily driving and are doing the things we might do at home (the 'home school' project stuff, cleaning house, eating in a lot more) that all of a sudden, I've hit a bit of a rough patch and am homesick. This time the kids are fine. I'm a bit of grumpy mess.

Jeff-Koon's flower dog

And yes, I will get over it - after all there are so many things to be grateful for and to look forward to and to share. But I have intended to be honest about the joys and tribulations of travelling as a family of five in this blog, and there you have it - the adventuring is awesome, but sometimes, you miss 'normal'. So for my wonderful friends and family who have sent emails and made comments here and on FB, thank you - you help my sanity!

This past week, irrespective of my slight wobblies, we have had fun. The MOTH wanted to visit the Guggenheim in Bilbao, about a 20 minute drive from Otañes (the fact that the location we are living in looks like 'O Tanes', is not lost on the MOTH :-) However, the ñ is pronounced more 'ny' than a hard 'n', so not quite O Tane). After our Park Gaulle parking debacle, we found a parking building via the GPS before we departed, which sped things up considerably!

The Guggenheim, Bilbao

The Guggenheim contains an interesting collection of permanent and temporary art installations. Unfortunately, the exhibit on the second floor of the three story building was being redone/upgraded and was unavailable when we visited. We had somehow missed this on their website and the information wasn't posted at the ticket booth, and visitors still had to pay full price to enter (a tad annoying). However children are free, as are the audio guides, and you can enter and re-enter the museum on the same day, which means you can go for a wander for lunch outside (many places we've been to do not allow this).

Although we only had access to two levels, there were plenty of exhibitions to see and interact with. Richard Serra's massive steel sculptures play with space and shape and are brilliant for children to run through and explore.

The children tentatively enter one of Serra's sculptures

 

"This space makes me feel like dancing!"

 

This is an aerial shot (from level two) of the steel sculptures - they were huge!

 

Yoko Ono's Half-a-wind-show took up the entire third floor and included many interactive exhibits such as climbing into giant sacks and become 'moving mountains' and a video of just bottoms, which the children thought were amusing! I've always been a bit sceptical of Ono's work, but this exhibition really demonstrated her ability as an artist to evoke thought and reaction (photos were prohibited here - I think they may have been in Serra's too, but no one said anything to the dozens of visitors taking pictures).

Not Ono's work, but another sculpture outside on the Guggenheim's terrace by Jeff Koons

And after all that 'art and culture' - a play ground! Parents and children happy all round.

We followed our day of art with a day of nature at Cabaceno Wildlife Park. While a little pricey, this drive through Safari park is an incredible opportunity to view wildlife in huge open spaces. Glimpsing animals in the midst of these spaces is sometimes a lucky treat (such as the hippos) and I can't count the number of times I cursed the limited zoom on my camera. Zebras, camels, gorillas, jaguars, rhinos, baboons...only a handful of the many animals we were blessed to spend time observing. Being spring time, there were lots of babies to see.

We were a long way from this Mummy and baby hippo (yay for zoom on camera!)

 The only issues we faced were getting in and out of the car dozens of times (a bit painful with car seats) and the heat increasing over a four hour time span (but hey it's Spain). This wildlife park is worth every penny and a definite must do. Here I've included some long shots of the 'enclosures' and some of the animals my poor pocket camera could capture... We'll leave with you with the Osos...besos a todos...

What can we see here? I've only got about a quarter of the enclosure in this shot.

 

A family of elephants who did an elephant walk for us! - spot the baby?

 

Can you see what Miss K is looking at?

Tama points out the Osos to the MOTH - how many can you see?

Adios from the endangered Osos (bears)of Cantabria