Circle Tour 13--Bilbao

To fill in the gap of 17 days abroad, I chose a photo or collage to represent each day.

June 1--The flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany.
There we waited for our connection to Spain, rested, and began to get acquainted with the teammates from Normal, IL.

June 2--Arrival in Bilbao-Bilbo, the city that only 30 years ago was the second most polluted in the world, blackened by the iron mining industry.

Symbolic Smoke Stack; Cityscape; Gugenheim Museum

As industry waned, the $100 million Bilbao Guggenheim Museum (1997) became part of the experiment to retool the city as an international center of culture and finance, which led to amazing transformation--a beautiful clean and green city!
This is the second time we've been so close and missed visiting the museum. Hopefully there will be another opportunity. (Read about our 2010 arrival in Bilbao here.)


June 3--Circle Day

It was the first riding day for the cyclists, who made up about one third of our team. They rode a 33 mile circuit in and around the city. With many steep hills and detours it proved to be the most challenging day. 

The rest of the team, the walkers, did just that--walked the city most of the day.
It was a very happy moment when we all came through the tunnel by the hotel at the same time!
Somehow, I don't believe in coincidences.

This has been in the works for several days, if not a week, so I've decided to break down the trip report by cities.
For many more pics of that day go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/97692681@N03/sets/72157634253672215/ .