September 20, 2023 Breakfast - Mirador at La Franca. Snack Dinner - Casrilla Termal in Solares
We woke up at 8:00 and packed and went to breakfast at the hotel.
Breakfast up is lovely with all the American favorites like Scrambled eggs, sausages, and bacon and all the Spanish favorites like several sliced hams and chorizos, lots of different types of bread, cakes, brownies, sponge cake, and tomato pomace. Then there was a whole table devoted to granola and cereals with fresh fruits.
Then there is a whole table with beverages with both a coffee machine and an espresso machine that makes what you want when you push a button. For example, if you push the button for coffee con Leche the machine heats milk and sprays it into the cup. Then if pours coffee infused with milk so the initial sprayed milk becomes the frothy head of steamed milk on top of the coffee con Leche.
But my favorite was another table with juices and waters, an automatic fresh orange juice machine that squeezes fresh orange juice from fresh oranges when you hold down the handle.
Breakfast was a lot of fun and we lingered until almost 10:00 when we paid the bill and drove back to Comillas determined to see Gaudi’s Capricho (Caprice) house. We were lucky to find a parking spot a long block from the main entrance and arrived at the ticket office at 10:28: two minutes before opening and were within the first dozen to enter.
The house is considered a masterpiece of modern European design but it impressed me more strongly as the precursor of Lego blocks because of its squared and stacked design.
As usual there was an extensive use of painted tiles.
We did not stay long because we had a reservation to tour El Pendo cave at 1:00 p.m.
On the way out of town Suzette stopped at an Antique store and I took pictures of a classy condo development high on the hill above Comillas with fabulous views of Comillas and the ocean to the North as well as the Picos de Europa to the South.
If I had a choice of where to live in Spain, this might be the place.
We arrived at El Pendo Cave after driving on a tiny mountain road for several miles at 12:40 and waited with about a dozen folks for the 1:00 tour.
El Pendo is totally different than Altamira. It is hard to find and it is archaeologically and artistically rich. There are ongoing excavations at El Pendo that, so far, have found human habitation as far back as 84,000 years ago, so Neanderthal lived in the cave before Homo Sapiens.
The cave has a large vaulted ceiling and at the base of the large vault there is a wall of painted animal images and symbols that is a few hundred feet below the cave entrance. The images are vivid and painted in reds and black. Similar to Altamira’s animals, horses, aurochs, deer, and a type of small Mongolian pony. The paintings date back 20,000 years from the Magdalenan period. They were discovered in 1997 and were covered with fungus and had to be cleaned with toothbrushes to expose the images.
There are piles of large rocks below the large ceiling and down the slope past the wall of images that still have not been examined, so El Pento may provide more archeological discoveries that may place it for firmly in the hierarchy of Pre-history caves.
This raises any interesting question, “When does pre-history merge with history?”
How for me a more profound question, “How am I connected to this period of history?”
“Did these humans 20,000 years ago have the same yearning to have Art be a part of their lives as I do today?”
More basically is what we are looking at art?
For me the answer is “Yes?
And I feel the same strong connection to it that I do to the great art of the 20th century.
There was a long path down to the cave entrance and it took a while to return to the parking lot.
It was almost 3:00 when we left El Pento.
We looked for a place to picnic and found none, so we drove to our destination, Castillo Termal Solares, in Solares.
It is a huge facility that has been in existence for a very long time and bottles and sells its mineral water.
We ate a snack of bread, cabrales and goat cheese, pear, plum, and pork loma with a bottle of the red wine we bought at the wine shop in Amares.
By the time we finished the snack it was almost 5:00 which is when Suzette had scheduled our use of the pool until 7:00.
Suzette also scheduled a pedicure for her and a massage for me.
We went to the large medicinal pool and tried a number of different hydrotherapy configurations. At 6:00 Suzette went to her treatment and at 7:00 i went for my massage, which was wonderful.
I returned t the room at 8:00 and at 9:30 we went to dinner at the restaurant in Hotel.
Suzette seems to be coming down with s cold so she ordered a hot seafood cream soup that made her throat feel better that was what she wanted.
I ordered a bowl of pasta tossed in a red beet pesto with toasted pumpkin seeds and grated cheese. My dish was obviously vegetarian, but it was rich in carbs and protein, so it was what I needed.
We ordered a bottle of Martin Codex Albariño that turned out to be the most expensive part of the meal.
We poured the remaining wine into our glasses and took them to the room to drink as we read.
This is our last stop of the trip. We do not have anything else planned except to work for the next two days
I will describe more of the Spa’s history in tomorrow’s blog.
Bon Appetit
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