Bilbao to Sevilla

We had an early afternoon flight back to Sevilla today from Bilbao. It was grey, cold and rainy in Bilbao as we lifted off. In Sevilla about 90 mins later, it was clear sunny and 35C-a remarkable climate change. Bilbao and northern Spain are beautiful. If I had another year here, I might think about living up there. Everything is so green, hilly and forested.

We took the bus from the aiport. Laura got off early to go to class. I went home, emptied the suitcase, cleaned the house a bit, and went to the gym.

I also made a much-needed trip to the trashcan, but was rewarded with a lovely sunset view of the downtown:

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With only a month left here, I need to prioritize some of my projects and see what kind of progress I can make in the next few weeks here.

San Sebastian to Pasajes

This morning we took a bus (1.5 hrs) to the town of San Sebastian about 100km east of Bilbao. We found an article about a hike from there to the next town, Pasajes, about 5km further to the east. Other than the damp weather which made some of the trail pretty slippery, it was a beautiful hike along the coast. After a sharp initial climb, we were rewarded with a nice view of San Sebastian:

Further along the trail, we had frequent glimpses of the coast and the Bay of Biscay which lies off of the northern coast of Spain:

The area we walked had numerous intersecting trails.

Eventually, we figured out we needed to follow the white/red bars. Once we realized that, we found that the trail was pretty clearly marked the whole way:

There were a lot of nice flowers along the trail:

Dropping down into the town Pasajes, we needed to take this water taxi across the inlet:
 

 It was only .8 euro and was pretty quick:


From Pasajes, we took the bus back to San Sebastian. We had a late lunch, wandered around a bit. Visited the beach:

And headed back to the bus station for the bus back to Bilbao. At one point, Laura noted we were 5 degrees removed from home: Walla Walla, Sevilla, Bilbao, San Sebastian, Pasajes. Tomorrow we wind that back down to 1 degree with a flight back to Sevilla.

Bilbao

We've been all over middle and southern Spain, but Bilbao is our first trip to the northern part of Spain. Right on the Bay of Biscay close to the French border, Bilbao is about half the size of Sevilla at around 350K pop. Surrounded by green hills, it's definitely more temperate, less dry compared to Sevilla. Our main goal for the trip was to visit the Guggenheim Museum. Situated downtown along the river, this modern art museum is nearly as interesting on the outside as it is on the inside. This giant spider lurks outside:

These large, shiny, stainless steel party favors also adorn the exterior:

 Inside there are a number of permanent and transitory exhibit spaces. I guess my favorite artist in the museum was Jenny Holzer. Her medium is text (very thoughtful text) imprinted on canvas or other everyday objects like paper, stone, or even LED reader boards:

This one was particularly disturbing. An LED reader board with quotes from Syrian refugees surrounded by a sea of actual human clavicles:

These massive steel constructions were designed to walk through. In fact, walking through them was an interesting and somewhat disorienting experience, but the view from above the hall was equally interesting:

 Every once in a while the fog machine outside fires up:

After the museum, Laura and I decided to climb up to the top of a nearby bridge to get a bird's eye view of the museum. After huffing and puffing our way up about 15 flights of stairs, we exited onto the bridge deck... right next to the elevator:

The view was worth the work though. The spider is fun to look at from this perspective:

This puppy in front of the museum is a collection of wildflowers growing on a steel frame:

Our hotel is in an old building away from the center. The hallways are like a maze going up and down stairs as they enter and exit adjacent buildings that the hotel has expanded into over the years:

The bathroom sink couldn't be smaller, but the shadows playing through the shelf above add a nice aesthetic:

This evening, we went to Plaza Nueva for dinner. Along the way, we crossed the river:

We randomly stopped at this place and had a bit of bar food and a couple of beers:

After, I had helado, but it disappeared too quickly to photograph.

Transition Day

I had a relatively normal work day today. I spent a bit of time working with cluster algorithms, read another chapter of Algorithms to Live By, and ran a load of laundry.

I'm back in the habit of walking Laura to her class and then to the gym in the afternoon. The Corpus Christi gate in Plaza de San Francisco continues to develop:

After dinner, I caught the airport bus to... well... the airport. Laura got met me on the bus after her class.

We flew to Bilbao in northern Spain for the weekend. The highlight being the Guggenheim museum. The bus, flight, bus went smoothly and we got to our hotel in Bilbao at around midnight.

Corpus Christi

Living in Sevilla, the 2nd most Catholic city in the world, I'm learning or re-learning a lot about Catholicism. In the Plaza de San Francisco, they are preparing for YAP (yet another procession).

This plaza, just down the street from the cathedral will be the main spectating area for the procession to celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi. This Catholic feast day is exactly two months after Maundy Thursday (the Thursday before Easter Sunday). The workers on the scissor lift are building the "gateway" for the procession.

Also visible in this photo are the recently erected shade tarps that are popping up over plazas all over Sevilla:

As we approach the solstice and the very hot time of the year here, the city puts up these shade tarps over many of the plazas and heavily used pedestrian avenues. The provide a bit of relief from the high blazing sun.

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I've been having some discussions with Justin and Sharon about developing a course for Whitman's first-year course sequence. The first-year course has recently been changed to allow groups of faculty to develop a syllabus that fits their area of expertise and interest to teach to the incoming first-year students. The new format will start in the 2020-21 academic year. We're working on some mash-up of data, algorithms and applications to art, humanities, science and social sciences. It's pretty broad right now, but we hope to meet in August and sharpen it up a bit. It's been fun chatting about it with them.

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I've been working through a clustering course on datacamp. I'm still struggling with methods of interpreting clustering algorithm results on high-dimensional data. I had some ideas today about applying dimension reduction to the resulting clusters and comparing their principle components. I haven't really ironed out the details yet though. There's not much literature about this, or, at least, I'm not finding it, haha.