La Salve Bridge: its official name is the ‘Prince and Princess of Spain Bridge’. It is made of green concrete and was the first bridge in Spain to be built with the cable-stayed system and one of the few with a steel deck. It was built in the early 1970s to connect the heart of the city with the suburbs, and now it also links up with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. In fact, on the tenth anniversary of the Museum, a great red gate by the French artist Daniel Buren called “L’arc rouge” (The red arc) was opened on the bridge.
Nervión River The Nervión river runs through the city of Bilbao, Spain into the Cantabrian Sea.
“conducta impropia”: spanish for “improper conduct”
“extenuating circumstances”: noun, Law.
Yellow Water Taxi: The closest thing to a river taxi service in Bilboa is Bilboats. This company is geared more towards tourism on the Nervión River. Bilboats have different vessels, with one covered and one open deck, so it can sail the waters of the River Nervión even on rainy days.
VIP– an acronyme for “very important person.” VIPs typically get special accommodations at events.
“velocidad y discreción”: Spanish for “speed and discretion”
news chopper: Chopper is the slang term for helicopter. Most major news sources have helicopters that are used to get an aerial view of different newsworthy events.
BIO-EC346: This code was given to Robert Langdon by Edmond Kirsch. Edmond mentions how this code is very simple, but it took some time before Langdon was able to decipher it. The first part of the code “BIO” is simply the airport acronym for the Bilboa airport. All airports have a a three letter acronym to represent the city in which the airport is location or the name of the airport. Some other examples used in this chapter were BOS, LAX, and JFK. BOS stands for Boston, LAX is the acronym for Los Angeles airport and JFK stands for John F. Kennedy airport located in New York City.
The second part of the code, “EC436,” is the tail number of a private jet. The “E” stands for España (Spain). This jet ended up being Edmond Kirsch’s private jet.
Kilometers or kilometer (international spelling) is a unit of length in the metric system, equal to one thousand metres (kilo- being the SI prefixfor 1000). It is now the measurement unit used officially for expressing distances between geographical places on land in most of the world; notable exceptions are the United States and the road network of the United Kingdom where the statute mile is the official unit used. 1 kilometer is equal to 0.621371 miles.
By Jillian Lessing