Hello, dear community! Today I’m here to participate in this fun new Hive night photography contest created by 
I first arrived in Spain during the month of October, and I was immediately surprised by how long the days were—and that was already in autumn! It never ceases to amaze me every year how the days get longer and longer as summer approaches. And then comes the drastic change in winter: the dark, closed-in night that falls as early as 6 p.m.
If I had to choose, it would be too hard to decide which one I like best. Winter nights have a special magic, but the long summer days definitely have their perks. Personally, I’ll stick with these not-so-dark nights of late spring.
I took these photos in May during a walk with my brother and sister-in-law at the Artxanda viewpoint. I have absolutely zero doubts as to why they fell in love with Bilbao during their visit. The night was cool, and the views were simply spectacular.
And so there we were, happily distracted looking at the city from above and taking beautiful pictures at 10 at night, when we finally decided it was time to leave. According to our calculations, the last funicular went down at 10:30, but when we got there… Oh, surprise! It was closed. How were we going to get down now?
We ran into a couple of tourists who were in the exact same situation. Of course, you can understand it from them; they aren’t like me, who has been living here for 8 years and still gets confused by these things.
I don’t even know if there was another way down, but we decided to do it on foot. We walked down that mountain in the middle of the night, chatting with the Austrian tourists. One of them spoke Spanish very well; it turns out she had lived in Venezuela many years ago. What a coincidence!
I don't have any photos of this part because the path was dark and looked a bit dangerous, we were using our phone flashlights, and I had to save battery. But here is a night photo of the funicular seen from below and some from inside of it.
We managed to make it to the bottom and still had to walk a little further to get to the metro station. The good thing is that we helped the tourists find the station and the train they needed to catch, and luckily, the metro was already running on its summer schedule, staying open late. It was quite an adventure, and it was such a lovely moment when the train they took started moving and they waved goodbye through the glass.
And well, these night photos were the beginning of that story—one more in our lives that we will keep telling as an anecdote when we grow old.
Si tuviera que escoger, me costaría demasiado decidir qué me gusta más. Las noches de invierno tienen una magia especial, pero los días largos de verano tienen sus beneficios. Yo me quedo con estas noches no tan oscuras de la aún primavera.
Y así estábamos, muy entretenidos observando la ciudad desde las alturas y tomando fotos bonitas a las 10 de la noche, cuando ya decidimos que era hora de irnos porque, según nosotros, el último funicular bajaba a las 10:30. Pero cuando llegamos allí… ¡oh, sorpresa!, estaba cerrado. ¿Cómo íbamos a bajar ahora?
Nos encontramos con un par de turistas que estaban en la misma situación. Claro que a ellas se les comprende; no son como yo, que llevo 8 años viviendo aquí y aun así me sigo despistando con estas cosas.
No tengo fotos de este evento porque el camino era oscuro y parecía peligroso, estábamos usando las linternas de nuestros teléfonos y yo tenía que ahorrar batería, pero aquí les dejo una foto nocturna del funicular visto desde abajo, y de cuando estábamos subiendo.
Logramos llegar abajo y aún tuvimos que caminar un poco para llegar a la estación del metro. Lo bueno es que ayudamos a las chicas turistas a encontrar la estación y el tren que tenían que agarrar y, por suerte, el metro sí estaba funcionando ya con horario de verano, hasta tarde. Fue toda una aventura, y fue muy lindo el momento en el que el metro que tomaron las chicas avanzaba y ellas se despedían con la mano a través del cristal.
Y bueno, estas fotos nocturnas fueron el comienzo de esa historia, una más en nuestras vidas, que seguiremos contando como anécdota cuando seamos mayores.
