CAR HIRE Bilbao     

Rhino Car Hire Bilbao offers car hire in Bilbao, Spain .  Just select your pick up location in Bilbao, the dates and times you want to pick up and drop off your hire car, your preferred car type and the age of the driver then compare car hire prices and book online with the best fully inclusive car hire rates from the top companies providing car hire in Bilbao, ...  We specialise in car hire in Bilbao and other destinations in Spain, check out the top locations on this page.!

Cheap Car Hire Bilbao

Book cheap car hire Bilbao securely online.  Our website will display an online quote and give you the lowest cost car hire prices available. Rhino Cheap Car Hire Bilbao provides a wide choice of vehicles from budget, economy options through to people carriers and luxury autos providing you with an affordable car hire choice.   Rhino Car Hire Bilbao will find you the very best deal to provide you with rental prices in  Bilbao, Spain.

Car Hire Bilbao from £14.00 a day

Compare Car Hire Bilbao

We will compare Car hire Bilbao packages available in  Bilbao for you -  it only takes one Search to find and compare car hire packages  and offer you the very best fully inclusive low cost best value car hire deals from top car hire companies including Advantage rent a car, Alamo car hire, Budget car hire, Dollar car rental, Easy car hire, Europcar car hire, Hertz car rental, Holiday Autos, Auto Europe car hire, National rent-a-car, Sixt rentals & Thrifty auto rentals covering 11,000 locations worldwide in a 134 Countries.
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Visit some of the amazing sites in Bilbao with a Rhino Convertible Car Hire

If you were to say only a decade ago that Bilbao was destined to become an international art Mecca, the select few who had ever visited the place would have laughed in your face. Bilbao meant rusty old steel mills and shipping. Travellers who weren't there on business didn't linger, unless they got lost in the maddening traffic system. Getting lost, however, would have allowed more people to appreciate Bilbao's uncommon setting, tucked in the lush green folds of Euskadi's coastal mountains, the grimy city filling up every possible pocket for miles along the Nervi6n, a notorious industrial by-product of a river, adopting the colour of chocolate milk or robin's-egg blue, depending on the day.

The name is Bilbo in Basque, just like the hobbit, but its inhabitants lovingly call it the Botxo, the Basque word for hole or orifice. 

The orifice was originally a scattering of fishing hamlets huddled on the left bank of a deep ria, where the hills offered some protection from the Normans and other pirates. In 1300, when the coast was clear of such dangers, the lord of Vizcaya, Diego L6pez de Haro, founded a new town on the right bank of the Ria de Bilbao. It quickly developed into the Basques' leading port and Spain's main link to northern Europe, exporting Castile's wool to Flanders and the swords Shakespeare called bilbos. ln 1511 the merchants formed a council to govern their affairs, the Consulado de Bilbao, an institution that survived and thrived until 1829. 

The 19th century had various tricks in store: the indignity of a French sacking in 1808 and sieges by the Carlists in both of their wars; Bilbao was the 'martyr city' of the Liberal cause. But the 19th century also made Bilbao into a great industrial dynamo. Blessed with its fabled iron mountain, nearby forests, cheap hydraulic power and excellent port, Bilbao got a double dose of the Industrial Revolution.

Steel mills, shipbuilding and other industries sprang up, quickly followed by banks and insurance companies and all the other accoutrements of capitalism. Workers from across the country poured into gritty tenements, and smoke clogged the air. It became the fourth city of Spain, and still is; it looks like Spain's Pittsburgh, and back at the turn of the century it was just as full of worker misery and exploitation. Social activism combined with Basque nationalism created a sturdy anti-fascist cocktail; during the Civil War, Bilbao was besieged again and Franco punished it crushingly.

Then, in the late 1950s, Bilbao was whipped forward to become once more the industrial powerhouse of Spain, but on an artificial life-support system that was unplugged in the new Spain of the EU. The iron mines gave out. In the 1980s, unemployment soared from six per cent to 20 per cent. 

Something had to be done to save the Botxo from becoming a real hole, and the Basques found the political will to do it. Thanks to banking, insurance and such less obviously dirty business, the economy was doing pretty well in spite of all the lay-offs, and this has allowed the city to embark on an ambitious redevelopment programme, reclaiming vast areas of the centre formerly devoted to heavy industry. The rusting machinery has been removed and the once-seedy dock area gentrified. The hugely popular Guggenheim Museum (see p.281), which opened in October 1997, has by itself significantly boosted the city's prestige. Other new projects include cleaning up the Nervf6n (it even has a few fish now), a concert hall and convention centre (completed in 1998), and a library, a park, a hotel, offices and residential buildings all being built on the site of the old shipyards .

A 'passenger interchange', which will put local and international bus and train services under one enormous roof, is planned, and the metro, with sleek, modern stations designed by Sir Norman Foster, was completed in 1995. The airport got an elegant new terminal designed by Santiago Calatrava in December 2000. And the capacity of the harbour has been doubled as part of a vast expansion project, making this one of the most important ports in Spain. New industries are being enticed here, too-the European Software Institute has based its headquarters in the 37 acre technology park in nearby Zamudio. Bilbao is shaping up to become one of the cities of Europe's future; come back in a few years and see. 

The Casco Viejo 

The Casco Viejo, centre of the city from the 15th-19th centuries, is a snug little region on the east bank of the Nervi6n; tucked away from the centre, it remains the city's heart. The Puente del Arenalleaves you in Plaza de Arriaga, known as 

El Arenal for the sand flats that stood here. Befitting Basque tradition, its monuments are both musical: the opera house, or Teatro Arriaga, and a glorious Art Nouveau pavilion in steel and glass that holds Sunday concerts. Adjacent is the arcaded Plaza Nueva, now a bit down-at-heel, but in its day the symbol of Bilbao's growth and prosperity. 

Philosopher Miguel de Unamuno was born on nearby C/La Ronda, not far from the Museo Vasco (La Cruz 4; open Tues-Sat 10.30-1-30 and 4-7, Sun 10.30-1.30; adm). Located in an old Jesuit cloister, it displays a scale-model of Vizcaya, a reconstruction of the rooms of the Consulate, the old merchants' organization, as well as tools, ship-models and Basque gravestones. In the middle of the cloister is the ancient Idola de Mikeldi, the museum's treasure, like a primitive depiction of the cow that jumped over the moon. Behind the museum, the Catedral de Santiago sends its graceful spire up over the old quarter. Begun in the 1200S, most of the elegant grey stone church is 14th-15th-century Gothic, though the facade was added in the 1880s. 

The Seven Streets 

Everything south of the Cathedral is the calm grey world of the 'Seven Streets', the core ofthe original village. All the neighborhood’s colour and animation is concentrated in the 1929 Mercado de la Ribera on the riverfront, the largest covered market in Spain. Nearby, the Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art (open Tues-Sat 10.]0-1.30 and 4-7, Sun 10.30-1.]0) displays over eight centuries' worth of religious art and finery; including vestments of gold brocade and numerous sculptures and paintings by Basque artists. 

The 'Seven Streets' being hemmed in by cliffs, Bilbao's centre migrated over the bridge as the city grew, while garden suburbs grew up on the cliffs. Behind the church of San Nicolas, an elevator ascends to the upper town, from where it's a short walk to the Viscayans' holy shrine, the Basilica de Begofia with its unusual spire stuck on an early 16th-century church. Inside a venerated statue of the Virgin holds court with some huge paintings by the slapdash Neapolitan Luca Giordano, probably the most popular painter of his day. There are fine views of the old town below. 

The Ensanche 

Nobody in the 19th century had a sharper sense of urban design than the Spaniards, and wherever a town had money, the results were impressive. Bilbao in its boom years had to face exponential population growth, and its mayors chose to plan for it; in the 1870S they annexed the 'Anteiglesia de Abando', an area of farmland across the river and commissioned a trio of planners, Severino de Achucarro, Pablo de Alzola and Ernest Hoffmeyer, to layout what came to be known as the Ensanche ('extension'). They came up with a simple-looking but really rather ingenious plan, with diagonal boulevards dividing up the broad loop of the river like orange segments. The Ensanche begins across from EI Arenal;just over the bridge from the old town, a statue of Bilbao's founder, Diego L6pez de Haro, looks benignly over the massive banks and circling traffic in the Plaza Circular. This has become the business district, with the big grey skyscraper of the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya, built in the 1960s, to remind us who is the leading force in the city's destiny today. The RENFE station occupies one corner ofthe square; behind it, on the riverfront, is one of the city's industrial-age landmarks-the Bilbao-Santander rail station, a charming Art Nouveau work with a wrought iron and tile facade, designed by Severino de Achucarro, South of the stations, Plaza Zabalburu marks the beginning of Bilbao's less salubrious quarters. On the cusp lie the Vista Alegre bullring and the Museo Taurino (open Mon-Fri 10030-1 and 4-6; adm), with mementoes from over 250 years of bullflghting history, including a magnificent embroidered cape by Goya. 

From pza de Espana, the Gran Via de Don Diego Lopez de Haro, the main boulevard of the Ensanche, extends westwards. A block to the north, the facade of the EI Corte Ingles department store is one vast high relief mural evoking the industry and history of Bilbao. The centre of the Ensanche scheme is Pza de Federico Moyua, or La Eliptica. Here, the Hotel Carlton, still one of the city's posh establishments, served as the seat of the Basque government under the Republic and during the Civil War.

From La Eliptica, C/Elcano takes you to the Museo de Bellas Artes (open Tues-Sat 10.30-1.30 and 4-7-30, Sun 10-2; adm), on the edge of the beautiful Parque de Dona Casilda Iturriza.lts worthy collection ranges from Flemish paintings (Metsys' The Money Changers is one of the best) to Spanish masters such as Velazquez, EI Greco, Zurbaran and Goya, as well as modern art by Picasso, Gauguin, Leger and Mary Cassatt, and 19th- and zoth-century Basques. Overflow from the Guggenheim has brought in more visitors, and the museum is currently being enlarged to accommodate them.

The park itself is an agreeable place, with carefully labelled exotic trees, a lagoon, and a new light-and-colour bauble called the 'Cybernetic Fountain'. 

Since the 1980s, major developments have taken place along the Nervi6n, and the evenings see the Bilbainos stream in to stroll along its banks in a pleasant riverfront park. Halfway along, the billowing, glass-floored Zubi Zuri ('white bridge') sails over 

Car Hire Tips

Car Hire Check in desks will need to see your driving licence, i.e. the plastic card and the counterpart if you hold the new style UK driving licence. Be organised and get your directions in advance as unfamiliar places in an unfamiliar hire car can be daunting at first.
Check out in advance which side of the road you will be driving if in a different Spain, most of Europe drive on the right as does the USA, but Cyprus, UK, Malta drive on the left as do Australia.
Have change ready in the Spain currency for any toll roads you may encounter.
If travelling to a hot country or during midsummer choose a hire car with air conditioning.  Turn on the fan with the A/C button otherwise it won’t work!  If travelling to ski resorts etc. check out the winter tyre and snow chain options available.
Automatic Car Hire Bilbao, vehicles are available with automatic controls.  Remember you will probably not be able to remove the keys from the ignition if you do not put the car in `Park’ first.
Take a credit card as optional car hire extras, i.e. child safety seats will need to be paid by credit card.

Visit some of the amazing Beaches in Bilbao with a Rhino Car Hire

Bilbao Car Hire

Ultimately, Car Hire Bilbao gives you the key to plan your own round of sightseeing, or business meetings and being in charge of your own agenda.  Collect a complimentary local map of Bilbao and ask at the check in desk for directions to your hotel etc. when collecting your Car Hire Bilbao.

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