On a sunny morning, warmer than it should be in a place so green and wet, Bilbao is magnificent. Curling out around the prim and taught little cathedral, no higher than the three-story apartment buildings, the old town bustles with weekenders. Unlike the homogenous white-washed villages of the southern end of the country, the northern regions adopt individuality. Each building, stuck to the one before it and clinging to the one after it, has its own design and colour scheme. Covered balconies called galerias stick out in reds, blacks, maroons, sapphire blues, counter-coloured against pastel walls; peaches, pinks, vermillion, burnt honey.