Bilbo (Bilbao)

The tide was out when the morning flight from Gatwick touched down, revealing mudflats that smelled faintly of diesel and salt. It's an honest introduction to Bilbao: a working port that happens to have world-class art in its front garden. The city doesn't bother with the usual Spanish fanfare of flamenco or bullfights. Instead, it offers something British travellers often claim to want – a place that gets on with life regardless of whether anyone's watching.

The Three Faces of the Ría

Start at the Casco Viejo, where medieval lanes are just wide enough for a Tesco delivery van to scrape through. The Siete Calles district looks compact on Google Maps, but the real joy is letting the city pull you sideways. One minute you're admiring 14th-century stonework, the next you're in a covered market where women who could be your Auntie Pat are prodding monkfish and arguing about prices. The bars here don't do tasting menus. They do gildas – skewers of olive, pepper and anchovy that taste like someone bottled the Mediterranean and added a kick of vinegar sharp enough to wake the dead.

Cross the first bridge and everything changes. The Ensanche's grid system feels almost Parisian, if Paris had more rain and better pintxos. This is where Bilbao's 19th-century merchants built their sandstone palaces, now converted into Zara and Mango. Keep walking west and you hit the regeneration zone – former warehouses turned into co-working spaces, the titanium whale that is the Guggenheim, and riverside paths where joggers dodge puddles that never quite dry. Three neighbourhoods, three centuries, one continuous 25-minute walk. No need for the hop-on bus here.

The Guggenheim matters, obviously. But the building works better when you treat it like Newcastle's Sage Centre – somewhere that hosts decent exhibitions in a structure that's the real star. The permanent collection includes Richard Serra's massive steel sculptures that feel like walking through a ship's hull. Current tickets cost €16 online, £2 more on the door. Student discounts apply if you've still got your old NUS card, even the expired one with the terrible photo.

Eating Without the Hard Sell

British food writers aren't lying – this is San Sebastián's scruffier, cheaper cousin. A proper pintxo crawl should cost €12-15 per person including wine, roughly half what you'd pay in the posher Basque resorts. The trick is treating it like a pub crawl with better snacks. Start standing at the bar, plate in hand, point at what looks good. Pay immediately, eat, move on. Repeat until you can't face another gilda.

For the anchovy-phobic, txistorra provides safe harbour – a thin sausage that tastes like someone upgraded your local Cumberland. The burnt Basque cheesecake has conquered London for good reason: it's essentially a Yorkshire pudding that went to finishing school and learned about caramelisation. Try it at Café del Arenal where they serve it still wobbling, €4.50 a slice. If you're really nervous about foreign food, head to Plaza Nueva on Sunday morning. The square fills with families sharing tortilla and croquetas that taste like someone's Spanish grandmother took over your local Wetherspoons kitchen.

When the Weather Does Its Thing

Let's be honest – it rains. Not Manchester drizzle, but proper Atlantic weather that arrives horizontally and soaks through festival macs in minutes. The locals don't flinch. They wear proper coats and carry umbrellas that could double as golf umbrellas, because they are golf umbrellas. The city keeps functioning because everyone's prepared. Pack accordingly or prepare to buy emergency clothing in El Corte Inglés, where the basement does a decent line in North Face knock-offs.

Rainy days actually work in your favour. Museums empty, bars fill, and you experience the city's indoor culture. The Fine Arts Museum costs €9 and contains enough Goyas to make you feel cultured without getting gallery fatigue. The Azkuna Zentroa, a former wine warehouse turned cultural centre, offers free entry to its rooftop terrace with city views. The ground floor contains a swimming pool with transparent bottom – bizarre but Instagram-friendly.

Beyond the Centre

The metro system makes Oxford Circus look straightforward. Buy the Bilbao Bizkaia Card online before travelling – €12 for 24 hours covers airport bus, all transport and museum discounts. The coast lies 30 minutes away on line 1. Plentzia offers a proper beach when the city gets too much, though the sand's coarser than Bournemouth and the Atlantic stays cold even in August. Inland, the funicular up Artxanda costs €3.50 return and provides the classic postcard view that locals claim to never need but secretly love.

Sunday mornings present the biggest challenge. The city centre becomes a ghost town until noon. Most museums stay shut. Your options: sleep late, head to the coast, or join locals at the Ribera Market. The market stays open until 2 pm, offering coffee strong enough to restart your heart and people-watching opportunities that beat any Netflix documentary. Watch elderly women haggle over spider crabs while their husbands discuss football over miniature beers.

The Honest Verdict

Bilbao won't change your life. It will give you a city break that feels like somewhere people actually live, work and argue about football. The food's excellent, the art's world-class, and the prices won't require remortgaging. The rain's real but manageable. The biggest danger? Treating it like a weekend box-ticking exercise and missing the point entirely. This isn't Barcelona with better weather or San Sebastián's cheaper cousin. It's a port city that learned to fancy itself, gradually and honestly, without losing what made it interesting in the first place.

Come for the Guggenheim if you must. Stay for the moment when you're sheltering from rain in a bar at 11 pm, sharing tortilla with strangers who could be your neighbours back home, realising that the best travel experiences happen when places stop trying to impress you and just get on with being themselves.