October 14, 2026

Wednesday

San Sebastián-Donistā, Gulpuscoa, España > Bilbo, Biscay, España > Cangas de Onis, Asturias, España

It was an early start today. Get up, get bags out, and get on the bus by 08:30. For the first time one couple was not on the bus on time. There was some confusion last night if the depart time was 08:30 or 09:00. Several of us were confused at breakfast but apparently all but one couple figured it out. Francesco called them and they came right down. We were on our way fairly quickly.

We arrived in Bilbao a little ahead of schedule. Bilbao is a largest city in the province of Biscay. It is still considered part of the Basque Country, in fact although Vitoria is the Capital, Bilbao is considered the defacto capital. The Bilbao metropolitan area has 1,037,847 inhabitants making it the largest city in Basque Country. We are still along the Atlantic Coast, but we are now about 16 km (10 mi) south of the Bay of Biscay.

The Rio Nerovión runs through Bilbao and it along this estuary that the city developed. The city is surrounded by two small mountain ranges which aren’t too high, maybe 400 meters (1,300 ft). This shapes the climate of the area along with the Bay of Biscay low-pressure systems and mid-air. The annual average temperature in low for this latitude.

The city was developed in the 13th century by Diego López V de Haro the head of a powerful family. Bilbao developed into a thriving port city and was one of commercial hubs of the Basque Country. It was therefore of significant importance to the Crown of Castile. Bilbao exported wool and iron commodities to all of Europe.   

Throughout the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, Bilbao experienced heavy industrialization, making it the centre of the second-most industrialized region of Spain, only behind Barcelona. At the city experienced an extraordinary population explosion prompted the annexation of several adjacent municipalities. By the late 20th century, Bilbao was a struggling industrial city hit hard by the collapse of steel production, shipyard closures, and soaring unemployment along a polluted Nervión River. 

Then in 1991 they city experienced the “Guggenheim Effect”. In 1991, the Basque Government proposed funding a museum to reinvent the city's decrepit port area. Thomas Krens, director of the Guggenheim Foundation, was seeking to expand the institution internationally. In a heavy competition with Copenhagen and Helsinki, Bilbao agreed to provide management, curatorship, and art loans in exchange for a $20 million fee and complete local funding of construction and operations.

The famous American architect Frank Gehry won the commission to design an iconic, ship-like structure that nodded to Bilbao’s industrial and maritime heritage. Because of the building's extreme mathematical complexity, Gehry's team used CATIA—a 3D software program originally created for the aerospace industry—to map the free-form curves. Gehry chose approximately 33,000 thin sheets of titanium for the outer skin after testing how the material reacted to weather and light, giving the surface an organic, shimmering texture that shifts with the sky. 

Probably not the best shot possible. That would be from the highway on the other side.

From that bridge you would get a good photo of the museum. Couldn’t get up there to take the photo.

The museum opened along the the rivers edge in the center of the industrial heart of the city in 1997. Suddenly everyone wanted to erect a show case building near the museum. The old industrial part of the city was swept away. The city experiences social, economic and aesthetic revitalization. The city continued with infrastructure investment such as a new airport terminal, a rapid transit system and a tram line. Nowadays, Bilbao is a vigorous service sector provider.

On 19 May 2010, the city of Bilbao was recognised with the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize, awarded by the city state of Singapore. The prize is c onsidered the Nobel Prize for urbanism. On 7 January 2013, its mayor, Iñaki Azkuna, received the 2012 World Mayor Prize awarded every two years by the British foundation The City Mayors Foundation, in recognition of the urban transformation experienced by the Biscayan capital since the 1990s. On 8 November 2017, Bilbao was chosen the Best European City 2018 at The Urbanism Awards 2018, awarded by the international organisation The Academy of Urbanism.

All of this brought to the city by The Guggenheim Museum. The museum is a museum of modern and contemporary art. It is one of several museums affiliated to the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation and features permanent and visiting exhibits of works by Spanish and international artists. King Juan Carlos I presided of the inaugurat on 18 October 1997, with an opening exhibition of 250 contemporary works of art. It is currently one of the largest museums in Spain.

We spent about two hours in the museum, and we didn’t even get to all the floors or various galleries. It is all modern art and for some of us this holds little interest. Yes, we saw some recognizable pieces in their original form, but we are old people with mostly traditional tastes. The building itself is very beautiful.

We were back on the bus and heading to Santillana del Mar is a town in the Cantabria region of northern Spain. It’s known for its medieval towers, Renaissance palaces and the Romanesque Santa Juliana Collegiate Church. However, we are not here for the town itself, we are here for lunch in one of the Paradores hotels.

The Paradores are a network of state-owned chain of luxury hotels in Spain and Portugal. King Alfonso XIII and the marquis of Vega-Inclán conceived and launched the idea of creating quality hotels to promote tourism and to solve a shortage of accommodations for early travelers and motorists protect the nation's historical architecture.  They very first establishment, the Parador de Gredos, opened in the Sierra de Gredos mountains in Ávila on October 9, 1928.

In the Mid-20th century, the state broadened the program to rescue and rehabilitate decaying castles, monasteries, convents, and palaces into public lodgings (such as Parador de Granada opened in 1944). Tonight we are staying the Parador Cangas de Onis – a 12th and 13th century monastery.

Lunch is at the Parador de Santillana Gil Blas a 4-star hotel housed in a 17th century Baroque mansion (the Former Casa Berreda-Bracho) in the Plaza Ramón Pelayo in the heart of Santillana de Mar. It opened in 1946 making it one of the first establishments in the network. The have Paradores played a role in modern Spanish democracy; the Parador de Gredos hosted the drafting of the 1978 Spanish Constitution, and the Parador de Carmona hosted the signing of Andalusia's Autonomy Statute in 1980. Today they are managed by the public company Paradores de Turismo de España S.A. under the Ministry of Finance, the network has grown to operate roughly 100 locations across Spain and Portugal.

Lunch was served in a very modern dinning room within the hotel. It is obvious they have kept exterior and modernized the interior without completely destroying the ambiance of the 17th century mansion. Lunch was served in a mixture of buffet and table service. A little strange but efficient. The starters were placed out buffet style and everyone helped themselves. We then ordered the main courses from the menu.

There were five main dishes being offered. Entrecôte de vaca de Cantabria; Solomillo de credo con salsa de questo; Cinta de lomo asada con puré de boniato; Lubina a la plancha con guarnición; and Salmón con verduritas. So, for those whose Spanish skills are lacking – ribeye steak from Cantabrian cows; pork tenderloin with Tresviso cheese sauce; Roasted port loin with sweet potato purée; Grilled Sea Bass with potatoes and Salmon with vegetables.

Lunch was great but now we all need a nap. On the way back to the bus Mary & I stopped and got an ice cream. The town was quite cute. Typical of a medieval walled city. Narrow cobblestone streets winding about in several different directions. It was probably near 16:00 when we got on the bus and headed to Parador Cangas de Onís.

Cangas de Onís (the valleys of towns (Onís), it doesn’t make much sense) is a municipality in the eastern part of the province and autonomous community of Asturias in the northwest of Spain. It sits on the edge of the Parque nacional de los Picos de Europa. The tall mountain range that kept the moors out of northern Spain. The drive to the hotel was short, maybe forty-five minutes, but the mountains are beautiful.

The enterance to the church from outside the monastery.

A closer view of just the doorway. The story of the pillars in the pillar on the left.

The inside of the little chapel

Parador de Cangas de Onís sits on the banks of the Sella River and surrounded by the spectacular Picos de Europa mountains. It is housed in the former Benedictine monastery of San Pedro de Villanueva—one of the oldest in Asturias—which was closely linked to the lineage of the early Asturian kings.

The Benedictine monastery of San Pedro de Villanueva was originally built in the mid-8th century by order of Alfonso I, the third King of Asturias, to commemorate his predecessor Favila—son of Don Pelayo—and it eventually housed one of the first royal pantheons of the Asturian crown.

Since 1907, the building has been designated a National Monument due to its historical significance and imposing architecture, which preserves traces of over 1,200 years of history. Together with a 13th-century Romanesque church, it forms a complex of incalculable value.

The capitals on the main entrance to San Pedro Church are the monument's greatest artistic treasure. According to some historians, the group on the left tells the story of the tragedy of the second Asturian king, Favila, who had worn the crown just two years before he was torn to pieces by a bear during a hunt near Cangas.

In the past, the entrance had four columns on each side, although the two outer ones were removed when the baroque tower was built. This stone "comic strip" starts with the metope on the wall, once covered but rediscovered in the 19th century by the painter Francisco Javier Parcerisa. According to tradition, it shows Favila, on horseback and holding a falcon, bidding farewell to his wife Froiluba with a kiss before going off on a hunt.

 Favila, on horseback and holding a falcon, bidding farewell to his wife Froiluba with a kiss before going off on a hunt.

The first capital, which has lost its column, shows the couple kissing again, with the palace in the background. On the other side, partially destroyed, is the mortal combat between Favila and the bear, which is baring its teeth. The second capital takes us back to the palace, where Froiluba, hands on hips, laments the death of the king and recalls his departure. The sequence concludes with the third capital, where Favila appears again in the arms of winged angels, who are fighting a demon in the form of a dragon for his soul.

Second Kiss

 Being killed by the bear

The poor wife lamenting the death, part 1

Poor wife, Part 2

The dragon and the angels

Dinner was table service in the hotel. Mary & I both got the Ensalada de brotes con queso azul de la perla manzana confitada (Salad with blue cheese from La Peral, with candied apple. Why the big deal on a specific blue cheese? Well Asturian blue cheese has won many worldwide awards.

La Peral is a traditional artisan blue cheese from the municipality of Illas in Asturias, Northern Spain, produced by the family-run dairy Queso’s La Peral since 1923. The most famous blue cheese is Cabrales. Asturias has a rich history rooted in the mountain-shepherding traditions of the Picos de Europa in northern Spain. Farmers and shepherds in the high mountain valleys of Asturias originally stored surplus milk and young cheese wheels in cool, humid limestone caves for preservation.

Over time, the natural local Penicillium molds living inside the caves naturally colonized the cheese, giving birth to its signature blue-green veining and sharp taste. While local oral traditions stretch back centuries, the first confirmed written mention of Cabrales appears in the 18th century, notably documented by the Asturian Enlightenment writer Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos. By the mid-19th century, the cheese gained a wider paper trail by the mid-1800s, appearing in historical and geographical dictionaries like Pascual Madoz’s work. Cabrales was officially granted DOP status in 1981, legally protecting its name, traditional production methods, and strict requirement that aging must happen inside natural mountain caves in Asturias.

Mary chose the pescado según la temporada con tallarines de verdura (the seasonal fish with julienned vegetables). I chose the fabada asturiana con sue compiango) Asturian bean stew). Postres (dessert) was arroz con leche caramelizado (caramelised rice pudding) for Mary, and  Frisuelos tradicionales com compota de manzana y mile de Los Picos (“Frixuelo” crêpes stuffed with apple compote) for me. Dinner was very good, but we ate too much food today and it is going to be a rough night.

Buenas noches y hola - Buonanotte e Ciao,

Enrico e Maria