Aste Negusia

We were late getting out of the house, as usual, so by the time we got the metro into Bilbao for Aste Nagusia we only caught the tail end of the giant heads parade.

The real draw turned out to be a bounce house. Anders and Jack climbed straight in and were told to get out and queue like everyone else. Anders waited it out patiently while Jack stood back playing too cool to bother — until a couple of minutes of watching Anders bounce around wore him down, and he was right back in line. Everything after that was a harder sell. They perked up for the food, though, and Jack made a project of walking the park sniffing his way past the cooking competition tables, 20+ of them scattered around, all of them smelling incredible. We never did get to try any of it — everyone seemed to be at the same early stage, caramelizing onions and aromatics, it looked like a park full of people making their own dinner rather than a competition at all.

We'd heard the evenings turn wild here — nine days of it, thousands of people, fireworks and txosnas (like beer gardens without the fences) going late into the night — but early afternoon was enough for us to