Carnival Pride Europe Cruise Review: Day 12 – Bilbaofeatured

I’ve been on many cruises to many places and many corners of the world. This may be the most port-intensive cruise we’d ever been on, and even though we were taking it easy, we were feeling it.

We were on day twelve of our vacation and day eight of our cruise. By this point, we’d been to six cities and five ports of call and we were sailing into another port to add another to the list.

By the time I woke up, we were already docked in Bilbao. Well, technically, we were docked in Getxo. I don’t think anyone told us that we weren’t docking in Bilbao proper. We probably should have known — Bilbao is inland so it’s technically not possible for a ship as large as the Pride to dock within the city — but we were a bit surprised to learn that we didn’t dock in the city and we’d have to figure out how to get into Bilbao.

We pulled our things together and headed up to the Lido deck for our (now standard) breakfasts of Blue Iguana Cantina breakfast burritos as we figured out how we’d get into the city and what we’d do.

There’s a bus and a Metro that go into Bilbao, but both are about a 20-minute walk from the port. There are taxi’s, which will run about €20-30, and obviously, you can take an excursion. There’s a Hop On Hop Off boat, but that didn’t start until 11:30 AM and we weren’t even sure if it would stop at the cruise terminal. As we were pouring over our options, Felipe came over the loudspeaker to announce there were free shuttles from the terminal to the city. He came on again a few minutes later to announce the shuttles were to the front of the port, which caused a lot of confusion, so we headed out to figure out what was what.

Once we got outside, we found a long line, at least 50 people deep (the majority were crew). A port representative was doing counts and told us there was a free shuttle to the city center in Bilbao, but there were only three of them, so it could take up to an hour to get on one, depending on where you were in line. If you didn’t want to wait, you could go inside the terminal to the port information desk and have them call a taxi, which could pick up right at the port. We were lucky enough to be able to get on the next one that came, so we waited about 20 minutes. They mentioned the last shuttle would leave Bilbao at 2:00 PM. Our back onboard time wasn’t until 5:30 PM. We found out later that this is a port service and they usually run it until a half hour before back onboard time, but Carnival had not asked for extended service or additional shuttles, so they only had limited services available for us being that it was a Sunday.

The ride to Bilbao took around 20 minutes and we were dropped off outside the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum. Most people will visit the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao — it is arguably the biggest attraction in the city — which was less than a ten minute walk from the drop off spot.

We were blessed with another day of beautiful weather, far too nice to spend the day indoors, so we decided that we’d just walk around, see what we could find, basically do what we’ve done in every other port so far. We had tours booked for our final three ports of call, so we were relishing in the opportunity to tour at our own pace. Bilbao is flat with paved sidewalks, so walking around seeing everything we could was a joy compared to the cobblestoned inclines in Portugal!

There is plenty to see and do in Bilbao and we just asked around finding whatever came in our path. We made it a point to see the Guggenheim (from the outside, anyways). There’s this larger than life floral topiary of a Scottish terrier — we had to see that, too. Parks and plazas, gardens, churches, more gorgeous facades — Bilbao is such a gorgeous city! We stopped for cappuccinos and sat in front of fountains. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful city.

One of the things I loved the most about Bilbao was that it smelled so incredible, like all of the flowers that grew vibrantly across the city. I’ve been to so many cities that have flowers and smell…less than pleasant…but Bilbao actually smells the way it looks — just so lovely. I loved how many gardens we found in the city and how many of them were placed almost like they were in the middle of the street. The contrast of the lively plants, topiaries and gardens against the modern city was a fun juxtaposition that I found way too much joy in.

We knew we could get a taxi back if we wanted to, but I felt safest just getting on the shuttle, which only left us with three hours in the city despite the full port day. We knew the last shuttle back would leave at 2:00 PM so we walked back around 1:10 PM, thinking getting on a little earlier would lessen the lines. No such luck. The line for a shuttle wrapped almost down the block (and there was one standing there that had just loaded!). I was hopeful we’d get on the next one, but there were so many people in line holding the place for three, five, one person was even holding a place in line for six other people! It grates my nerves but that’s a me problem, not a we problem — I can’t control others (look at me! Growth! Progress!). We didn’t make it on the next one, either, but we were first to hop on the one after that. As we were pulling out of the city, a group of people dressed in vegetable costumes danced their way through the crosswalk in front of us. It was so bizarre, but a fitting end to a fun day.

Once we got back to the ship, we headed upstairs to the Lido deck for lunch. The Blue Iguana Cantina was the most consistently good, so we settled there for most breakfasts and lunches and it rarely disappointed!

After lunch, we headed back to the room, where we just kind of relaxed for awhile. We needed all the rest we could get with all these ports! At some point, I went for a walk to hit the last 2000 steps for my day (and caught some beautiful views of the city!) but we took it easy so we could keep our energy up for our next few ports.

We missed sailaway, which happened during dinner. We figured out that eating at the earliest seating yielded the best service since there was limited opportunities for the servers to fall behind, but despite the friendliness of tonight’s servers, our meal took over an hour and a half (again) and got us out just in time to get to the Taj Mahal for the doors open for tonight’s production show.

Tonight’s production show was 88 Keys, which flip flopped with Heart of Soul earlier in the week. The show focused on the songs of Billy Joel and Elton John (along with a few others). The use of lasers and colors was so engaging, and while the set list wasn’t my cup of tea, the cast was so talented that they could have read the phone book and entertained us!

The sun was still high in the sky when the show got out. It will never cease to amaze me how late it stays light out during the spring and summer in Europe! We settled back in the room, watching the Food Network and planning out our day in Bordeaux. France is one of my favorite countries in the world and I just couldn’t wait to be back for a visit!