Bicicletas y el restaurante chino

Well today was another FABULOUS Friday, I spent the day all over Bilbao and spent hardly any money enjoying the beautiful day! It began with the surprise breakfast for Marta which was pretty early but pretty delicious, with tortilla (the first time I've had eggs for breakfast since arriving here) and croissants and hot coffeeeeee yum! Then, I met up with Linden for some more coffee (the american sized huge coffee cups) and shopping, and actually bought a little Basque pendant for my necklace so I can remember this trip! In case I won't remember that I lived here for 4 months and practically mastered Spanish here, I'll have a little silver charm!

After the coffee break we kept walking around, buying souvenirs and getting some touristy shopping done so we could stay out in the nice weather (it was 65 and sunny all day!). Afterwards we returned to my casa for lunch with Marta and Esti around 3 and had a pretty great 2 hour discussion about Americans and Spanish/traveling/culture, it was so fun! We felt pretty fluent, especially after Esti insulted Americans and we were semi-able to dissuade her. Finally, we went back to Casco Viejo around 5 to partake in my new FAVORITE activity, biking around the city for FREE! It was so great, we rented two bikes, rode all the way through Bilbao and up to Sarriko where there is an architectural metro station or something, and then back down to the city, all during a beautiful sunset and perfect temps. Oh boy, I think I'm in love.
To top it all off, we returned to the casa where Linden left and the family and I went out to dinner for Marta's birthday to a Chinese-Spanish restaurant. Weird combo, I know, and actually awful. Hahah the experience was pretty great in itself because it was my first dinner outing with the whole family, but the food was terrible! God I miss New York Chinese take-out, the won ton soup here was like lettuce floating in water-diluted soy sauce, the noodles were bland, and the chicken fried rice was just lacking. HOWEVER, they did have this amazing "chinese bread" that is pretty much FRIED bread, like a funnel cake. The best part of the meal was watching my own family's social skills sort of break down in public- for example, Telmo, the 5-year old cutie patootey, had a pretty bad cold so he was drugged up on cough meds and kept falling asleep on benches. Pobre chico. Then, after a round of cokes for the kiddos, he was back on top of his game so much though that after a verse or four of "We Are the Champions", he slammed his glass down and it broke in his hand, forcing a small "Uh oh" from his little mouth. Still adorable. And he was fine, just chuckled it off. THEN, he decided to become a drummer with his chopsticks and after a few songs he jammed a little too hard and one half of the chopsticks flew across the table, hitting my own glass and landing in my lap. Needless to say, he was probably feeling better but has not eaten outside of the house much. Sara also tends to have chair problems, in the sense that she can't sit properly on a chair to say her life. Thus, many dinners are spent laughing at her as she falls completely off the chair, usually taking it down with her with a terrified look on her face. Hahah oh it makes me smile just thinking about it now, poor Meg.

Anywho, the whole day was a blast and I plan on spending most of my Fridays like this if possible. Between the FREE bikes and the beautiful weather, Bilbao is very quickly becoming one of my favorite places in Europe, although I haven't really visited many other countries so that's not really saying much. :)