Europe
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An early morning walk along the mountain
river and back through Arriondas began my morning. It is cool
enough to wear gloves and a headband. There was little
activity in the town at 7 AM. I saw a few employees going to
the hospital and construction people at a site. People get
going late but of course when supper is after 9 PM, you would
be staying up late. The view out our sun porch of the distant
mountains is lovely. There’s some clear skies visible and the
sun is shining in patchy areas.
Breakfast is at 9 and turned out to be a disappointing
croissant and hot drink. AD doesn’t like them so he pouted
through breakfast time until getting to the room to eat some
of the muffins, remaining from the Carrefour shopping. DW and
AD did schoolwork all morning while I made day trip plans with
the owner of the hotel. She also gave me a tour of her side of
the building. The house was built for two brothers who brought
back earnings from Cuba. There were many big homes built in
the 1920’s, so it must have been a time of repatriation. She
told me “that she can tell by the style if the family was in
Mexico, Argentina, etc”. It’s fascinating to see all these
former palaces set in prominent positions in these small towns
and cities. Many are in terrible state of repair.
Shortly after the roaring ’20’s of Spain came the terrible
Spanish Civil War. The war which was romanticized in
Hemmingway’s stories, started in the Asturian region. Bombs
dropped in these small towns and our owner’s grandmother was
killed aiding some wounded men. “Brother against brother” was
how she described it to me. The same as many families in our
own Civil War. The main difference is, we didn’t end up with a
dictator who ruled for 40 years and ran the country into the
ground!
About noon, we drove to the nearby city of Oviedo which turned
out to be one of the most charming cities visited on this
trip. It has a central area which is meticulously maintained
in a classic style. The buildings were painted interesting
earth tone colors, and had a range of architectural styles
from Colonial, Mission, to Baroque. There were a number of
huge churches on pedestrian squares. We enjoyed the walking
and a delicious set menu lunch. The Asturias region is renown
for great food. There are also many existing Pre-Romanesque
churches.
The Christians stopped the advance of the Moors through Spain
in 718 when Alfonso I was the first king. He started the
construction of monasteries which spread across the region.
Many of these structures still stand. We visited one in a
rural area called San Salador de Valdedios, just south of
Villavicoisa. The EU has just funded a major renovation of the
buildings and plaza. Little is left of what must have been a
thriving farm community to support such a large religious
facility.
Villavicoisa is a large town that is famous for Sidra, a local
alcoholic cider. It doesn’t taste like the hard cider, we know
in the USA. It is almost closer to a fermented apple wine. We
sat in an outdoor café and tried a glass of Sidra. Yuk!!
Neither of particularly liked it. The 14th century Church of
Santa Maria de la Oliva sits on the main intersection as you
enter the town. It’s only the size of a small chapel. Outside
of the town is an amazing home called “Mansion Americanos”.
Obviously built by a local man who made it big in the new
world.
Our $8 Michelin map more than paid for itself today by
allowing us the opportunity to travel the back roads. We
returned to Arriondas on back farm roads through little
communities that are so small they shouldn’t be named. Most of
the farms are dairies. We saw men gathering mowed hay by hand
into a horse drawn wagon. The land is densely forested on many
hillsides while others are pastures for the cows.
Our room gives us a pleasant place to sit and drink some wine
and play cards before dinner. Many of the restaurants were
closed on Monday night since they were open on Sunday. We
never really know how the chicken or beef we order is going to
be prepared. Tonight turned out to be the same style as lunch.
The word for the day is “Guggenheim”. I
actually felt that the word should be gaudy but TD wanted
Guggenheim so I went along to get along. There are many
interesting words that could be used for today’s word for the
day, including the fact that Bilboa rhymes with “cow” in it‘s
pronunciation.
We headed off after a quick cup of coffee for Bilboa to see
the Guggenheim Museum. The drive went quickly and fortunately
took only 2 hours and not the predicted 2 ½ hours.
Unfortunately, Bilboa is not set up for tourists visiting the
museum and it took us over 30 minutes to find a parking place.
The museum was built in 1997 and is made of glass, metal and
water. Designed by an American, Frank Gehry, who also designed
the recent addition to the Toledo Museum of Art. It is in my
opinion, the most spectacular of the 5 Guggenheim Museums.
It houses a collection of contemporary and pop art. TD and AD
are not modern art enthusiasts, but the huge abstract spider
sculpture outside the museum caught everyone’s attention. I
find that artworks from this genre range from thought
provoking to mind boggling. One that I found particularly
bizarre shows a naked, overweight woman from the waist up,
wearing a tight fitting leather mask over her head. Her arms
are stabbed through, in a linear design,
with large bore
syringe needles. OUCH!! The taped tour luckily helped to
explain some of the artists thought processes. Not that one though. We all felt that the Pompidou Center in Paris has a
better collection but, the fact that the second floor was
closed may have lead to some of our dissatisfaction. The 8 ton
metal curving walkway sculpture was really neat as was the
wall of super imposed flower prints. Two huge Andy Warhol’s of
Marilyn Monroe and Chairman Moa were cool.
After a quick lunch and stop at the internet, we headed to
Santander. I have fallen in love with the many restaurant menu
figurines and the multiple statues that highlight olden day
Spain. Santander sits on the beach and has a large waterfront
with many beautiful old homes. From there we went to Comillas,
Santillana and San Vicente. These small villages pepper the
countryside with beautiful old churches, stone villas and rich
green countryside.
San Vicente de la Barquera holds some real treasures. Not only
was there the usual, large old homes built by the repatriated
colonials, but a few major architectural wonders. One that
sits up on a promontory hill is the abandoned Universidad
Pontificia, a former seminary. I hope someone is able to make
a hotel out of it. On the street below is the Palacio de
Sobrellano and a small chapel. The village can boast a home
designed by Gaudi. Capricio de Gaudi is hidden from the main
road and worth the effort to find. The building is a mixture
of red brick and glazed ceramic tiles boasting a thousands of
sunflowers. You have to see it to believe it. It is from Gaudi
that the term gaudy was coined and it really shows in his
work.
It was an exhausting day. We had been on the road 11 hours
before returning to the hotel for a little wine and chips. We
tried another one of the small bar/cafes in Arriandos for
dinner. The food was better than last night. A beef stew was
delicious and AD ended up eating most of it. There’s snow in
the forecast for tomorrow at high elevations. That means more
rain for us.
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AD Journal |
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