Last year’s trip to northern Spain resulted in quite a few surprises. I was unprepared for the beauty of the Galician countryside, the diversity of the food in northern Spain, cities and towns like Oviedo and Ribeira. At the end of my nearly month long drive from border to border (Portugal to France) I stayed about a week in Bilbao.

The flash point for the Spanish Civil War, Bilbao has always been a hard-scrabble, blue collar city attracting immigrants to work in the great port. Many people are Basque, speaking the Euskara language. All signage is in Euskara and Spanish. The populace is hard working and there are significant numbers of friendly Africans and Arabs who bring the colors, sounds, and foods from their native countries. Needless to say it is a very interesting city.

Bilbao is also full of art: museums, murals, street musicians, galleries, the works. Not the least of which is the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum which demands to be seen many times, with different light, different angles, different moods. Around the outside of the Guggenheim Museum, the esplanade between the Río Nervión and the museum itself is engulfed in artificial fog once or twice a day. It surprised me the first time, quite an experience that made me giggle.

I went back a second and third time and caught this photograph of people are getting playful in the fog.

When I think back on this trip, I’ll remember this scene.