Getxo: Vizcaya Bridge / Bizkaiko Zubia / Puente de Vizcaya

AB and I decided to spend a few days in the Basque Country after my project in San Sebastian was completed. While looking for a place to stay on Airbnb.com – which is my favourite site for finding accommodation when travelling – I came across a charming place in Getxo.

Getxo, what?

It’s a coastal town that is less than 30 minutes by metro from Bilbao centre. I’d strongly recommend staying here instead of in Bilbao if you’re spending a few days in the city as it’s just amazing to be by the sea and the town’s quite picturesque. Here’s the view from the house that we stayed in. Amazing, isn’t it?

The lady from whom we rented a room lamented that her childhood hometown has been encroached by people from all over. The irony: Because everyone wants a piece of this coastal heaven, many of them end up blocking the view or disrupting the beauty of the landscape with the ugly concrete blocks that they live in.

Anyway, while reading about Getxo online, I came across a blog in Spanish about a remarkable transporter bridge called Vizcaya Bridge (English) / Bizkaiko Zubia (Basque) / Puente de Vizcaya (Spanish) which has been connecting two towns across the river mouth leading to the Bilbao port.

Actually, this was the first time that I came across the “transporter bridge” concept. What a marvel this must have been when it was completed in 1893 – the world’s first suspended bridge to transport people and vehicles across a river! No wonder it has been recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It didn’t take much effort to convince AB that we should stay at Getxo and that we have to check out the Vizcaya Bridge : )

We walked across the top of the bridge which was around 45 metres above the Nervion River. After exploring the tiny Portugalete town, we took the gondola back to Las Arena.

More about the bridge crossing (it was incredible!) next time as I still need to edit my photos…