aventuras en Bilbao

AHH!!

So we've only just gotten back to Bilbao and settled in our hostel, but the proces was quite the ordeal.

We followed the direction to get to the hostel exactly as Celia had copied them down from the hostel world website, and we didn't exactly expect to have problems.

We literally ended up on an auto mile. Like the area was very very far from the center of town and industrial, and every single shop either sold cars, sold auto parts, or repaired cars. After walking up and down the street several times and not finding any hint of hostel or even street number, we tried the phone number. The phone didn't work. We began to panic; we were in a strange neighborhood in a strange city, contemplating the idea that we might have booked a room in a non-existent, possibly scam hostel, and might have to somehow find another place to sleep for the night. Basically, we were in a tight spot.

Desperate, we walked into the only building that wasn't an auto store; a labratory. We walked in and sheepishly asked the lab-coat wearing man at the front desk if there was a hostel nearby. 'This is a labratory,' he said.

However, he ended up being a lifesaver. He looked up the hostel on his computer, and after about 15 minutes of us holding our breath and him not really appearing to know how to do an internet search, we had a map and we were on our way!

Celia had apparently left out the key step; we were supposed to walk much farther down the street than we had expected, and given that the neighborhood was not where one would typically expect to find a hostel, its no wonder we freaked out. BUT all is well, we are here now! The receptionist was incredibly friendly, complimented us on our spanish (!) and gave us tea! We will soon have beds (they are cleaning our room for us), and we are feeling much better about Bilbao and life in general now that we are settled in our hostel that, as it turns out, is NOT located in an auto repair shop. Thank God!

More later,

Elena