Mount Artxanda

So on a day which according to my camera was February 20th, I made a journey up to Mount Artxanda, one of the two mountain ranges that surround Bilbao.  It's close enough to the city that you can walk all the way up to the top in about half an hour, but there's also a tram that will take you up in two minutes.  Once you're at the top, you can basically see the whole city:

Here it is

And here

 The mountain isn't particularly tall or steep, so there are actually houses and roads all the way up.  The top of the mountain is technically part of the city, but it's more like a separate little village with its own shops and restaurants.  We went there on a Sunday, so everything was closed, but we just walked around the park/scenic view area that's by the tram stop and took pictures.

Like this one

 I tried to get a picture of my dorm from up there, but the lighting was a horrible sort of mixture of fog and bright sun shining in the wrong direction, so I got this:

My dorm is across the river from the skyscraper, maybe

 Also, there were some odd sculptures up there, because there are sculptures everywhere in Bilbao.

A giant fingerprint

A gear or something, I guess

So there's that.

Things About France

So since the last time I updated (a month ago--whoops), we took a trip with CIDE to Bayonne, a city in the Basque country of France*, and saw the following things:

A building that was used as Nazi headquarters during WWII

Some kind of Gothic cathedral

Statue of an angry wizard (cleverly disguised as a cardinal)

A warning: Do Not Sit.  Do Not Sit.  Do Not Dance.

The fancy door of a dental clinic

Generic view of the city across what I think is a river

A street on a hill; also: a tiny French person

DRAGON GUTTER

I have done many things since this trip, but I will save them for other posts so as not to overwhelm your brains with awesome.  Stay tuned for more adventures/picture dumps without context or background information in the days to come!

*Fun Fact:  Aside from being the home of wizards and dragons made of metal, Bayonne is also the birthplace of bayonets and possibly mayonnaise, everyone's two favorite things!