Do you like to travel?  If you do, then you should try traveling to Bilbao, Spain.  This is a beautiful city to see, and when you fly here, you will arrive in Bilbao Airport.  This airport is located just a few miles north of the center of Bilbao.  It is also the most important airfield in the Basque Country and northern Spain.  Last year alone, in 2007, they had over four million passengers.  Bilbao Airport is most famous for the new terminal that opened up in 2000, because it was designed by Santiago Calatrava.  He also designed the Zubizuri Bridge that is located in Bilbao.  It has been loved by its architectural looks but criticized for its impracticality, just like the terminal.

The terminal was designed to be sleek.  It has two symmetrical wings with a sharp tip at its center.  This is most visible when you are looking at the terminal from the side.  Because of this design, it was given the nickname “La Paloma” which means “The Dove.”  The terminal is split into two floors, the top floor for departures and the bottom floor for arrivals.  The interior is very open and brightly lit.  However, in spite of this, there have some criticisms of Santiago Calatrava’s design by the Spanish airport authority.  They dislike the fact that the terminal’s design seems difficult to renovate and upgrade, because the design is too closed.  However, modifications began to take place in 2005 and 2006 to provide better shopping facilities for travelers.  There is now twice the retail space being offered.

Bilbao airport offers car hire on location. Cheap car hire is easy to find out of the number of suppliers available in the airport, such as National, Hertz, Avis and Europcar. If you don’t want to rent a car don’t worry there are plenty of other transport options. The airport has Taxis which will take you wherever you would like to go, and there are busses and trains that transport into the city centre which is cheap and easy.