BOX 173-174: Northern Spain.

This is the town of Luarca in the province of Asturias, on the northern coast of Spain, on an inlet from the Bay of Biscay, known in Spanish as El Mar Cantabrico or Golfo de Vizcaya. It's a place I'd never heard of before arriving there, but it was a very enjoyable stop on the trip I was taking with my friend Gloria, her young sons, Nigel and Lucas, and her mother, Evelyn. As I've described in previous posts, we started out from Madrid and stayed overnight in such famous places as Avila, Segovia, Leon and Santiago de Compostela, as well as driving to many sites less familiar to most American tourists. But now we had left Santiago for the northwestern corner of Spain, and would head east through territory totally unknown to me: along the north coast through Asturias, Cantabria and Basque Country.

American tourists go to San Sebastian (and in recent years Bilbao) on the northeast stretch of the Spanish coast, but I've never met anyone before or since my 1987 visit who had been to any of the other places we visited during that stretch of our trip. The tourists we encountered were mostly Spanish. Yet the places themselves were wonderful, whether seaside resorts, rugged coastlines or magnificent buildings ranging from 9th Century churches to a Gaudi "caprice."

Our first stop was the Galician city of A Coruña (the rest of Spain calls it La Coruña). I don't remember much about it other than buildings featuring the boxy bay windows seen throughout Galicia. The second photo I imagine was taken from my hotel window.

Driving eastward along the coast we came to Luarca. Your first view of the town as you enter from the west is of a lighthouse and a cemetery church, and then the town itself:

The buildings along the harbor front were attractive, and we most likely had good seafood at a local restaurant.

You can guess from these photos that the northern coastline is pretty hilly, and indeed you're looking at the foothills of mountains farther south. One spectacular overlook we came to was upon the Cliffs of Cabo Vidio:

We made a detour inland toward the town of Oviedo to see two truly ancient churches, from the 800s AD. The first was Santa Maria del Naranco:

The other was San Miguel de Lillo. In the shot below you see Evelyn in the red skirt and Gloria helping her kids out of our red rental car:

Back on the coast we stopped at a state park called Cuevas del Mar, the name referring to sea caves:

To get to the beach from the parking lot you had to go around the shore of a little inlet, with a cliff to the side: you get a glimpse of it to the left in the photo below. We didn't realize that when the tide came in (from the right) the shoreline became underwater--but we soon saw the situation when we returned from an hour or two at the beach. It was a bit scary carrying the two small children through surging water at the edge of the cliff!

My next photo is of an urban beach in the town of Llanes. I don't really remember it (and had to search for the name via Google Images, as I did for several of the photos in this post), but we must have spent some time there--we seldom passed up a nice beach!

Farther east is the resort town of Comillas. Here, wealthy Madrid families of the late 19th Century had summer homes. One such place is the 1888 Sobrillanos Palace and Chapel, built in neo-gothic style by a Barcelona colleague of Gaudi:

Another is by Gaudi himself: an extravagance called El Capricho, completed 1885:

Next along the coast was a town where we stayed the night: Santillana del Mar (not actually on the sea but a little ways inland):

The town square was handsome, and the narrow streets inviting:

The most famous building is the Collegiate Church of Santa Juliana (after whom the town is named):

One detail I remember from Santillana del Mar was the dessert we had that evening: a flan baked with fresh figs in it. I haven't said much about the food we had during our weeks in Spain, other than the memorable dinner in Vigo I described in my previous post --but I might say here that it was nearly always very good: in general, markedly meatier in the interior (Segovia, Leon), though I remember merluza (hake) in green sauce (parsley, garlic, olive oil) being popular everywhere. The most fun was sampling the variety of seafood offered in coastal towns, including various shellfish I had never seen or heard of before, including razor clams. I also got very used to the morning routine of stopping in a cafe for great café con leche and, often, fresh-squeezed orange juice, with a crescent roll or a slice of tortilla, the egg-potato-onion torte available as a sort of breakfast tapa.

The next morning we visited the Caves of Altamira, famous for prehistoric cave paintings. (My one slide is too soft-focused to be worth printing here.) Then we made a detour considerably south of the coast, to the city of Burgos, primarily to see its cathedral. The drive through the rugged mountains into a drier terrain offered spectacular scenery. (Unfortunately, as I turn to a new slide box, the pictures, from a different developer than the previous ones, have considerably faded; I've attempted to made digital adjustments.)

The Cathedral of Burgos was built mainly in the 1200s in High French Gothic style. Here is our first view of its spires from a distance:

And here are closer views:

We decided to take a guided tour of the interior, and we were glad we did, since the church is packed with detail of artistic and historical interest--we were lucky to have an excellent tour guide. I was not able to take effective photos inside the Cathedral, but I did get a shot of the lantern:

I've posted a lot about cathedrals lately, and I'm aware of the old tourist jokes about "Not another cathedral!" But these structures of close to a thousand years ago are among the most incredible achievements of humankind to date, and the great cathedrals of Spain that we saw--especially Segovia, Leon, Santiago de Compostela and Burgos (and I'd add, from more recent trips, Seville and Cordova)--were each extremely different from one another and cast their own unique spells. Each was a major highlight of the trip.

We stayed overnight in Burgos, but I don't remember much about the city. I did take two more photos, one of Gloria and the kids standing by a fountain, the other of a park with an imposing statue:

From Burgos we drove back to the coast but now into Basque Country. For some reason I took many fewer photos during the last week of my trip than before--precisely four! It's

true that my strongest memories of these days are of beaches and good food rather than architectural landmarks. In any case, I don't remember what town we stayed in during our first night in Basque Country, but the second and third were in San Sebastian, with its famous curve of beach. I took one photo of the beach from the promenade beyond it, and then a second photo of my great traveling companions.

From San Sebastian we spent a day driving south to Catalonia, with a couple of stops along the way. The first was in Pamplona--we explored the town, famous for its famous "running of the bulls," but I took no photos, not even of the Hemingway statue. Next was Olite, where the kings of Navarre had a royal palace. This is an elaborate complex, but I have only one photo:

When we reached the Mediterranean coast we went first to Tarragona, where I remember the beach and my first gazpacho of the trip, but took no photos. Then we spent more time--a few days--in the beach town of Sitges, near Barcelona; Evelyn probably turned in the rental car then. Here is the one photo of it I took:

The town itself was of some interest; our small hotel, facing the beach like the ones in the left of this photo, was very pleasant; the very long beach wasn't everywhere as crowded as it looks on the right; and the seafood tapas were excellent. One day there seemed to be a lot of people setting off firecrackers in our vicinity--a few during the day but in increasing numbers toward evening. Someone told us it was "Firecracker Day," but eventually we learned that it was John the Baptist Day (June 24), a holiday celebrated with fireworks in Spain or at least Catalonia. After a firecracker went off dangerously near Lucas' stroller, Gloria took the kids back to the hotel early.

At this point the day of my scheduled flight from Madrid back to the States was approaching. I took a train from Sitges into Barcelona and then to Madrid and the airport. Looking back, I'm sorry I didn't stay with my friends for the last parts of their trip--to Barcelona with a side trip to Ibiza. But I had had a great four weeks, seeing parts of Spain I most likely never would have gotten to otherwise, in great company. My next post or two will take us back to Sheboygan and Ohio, before my next trip to Europe, in 1989.