A busy day in Asturias

We set off in the rain, constantly fighting with the GPS which keeps wanting to take us on to the freeway rather than meandering around the back roads.

We first went to the little fishing village of Lastres, recommended by one of the few English speaking visitors we came across, a Spanish girl living in London back visiting family.  While it was raining quite heavily, I managed to take this photo, after we had our usual morning break of great Spanish coffee and a snack, usually a tortilla or something like it.  The Spanish do these morning snacks very well.

Next was Ribadesella, a lively town where we walked around.  Still raining a bit but it eased while we had our picnic lunch on a bench by the water.

The blue cheese is one of the most divine cheeses we have ever had - strong and melt in your mouth quality.  The pepper is the only really healthy part of this repast.

A lovely church by the water at Niembro.

A beach shot.  Lonely Planet keeps raving about lovely beaches along the coast but frankly, very few European beaches can be taken seriously by Aussies.  They are pretty enough but compared our golden beauties they are not that appealing.  Especially not along the Atlantic coast.

We then drove to another recommendation by the Spanish girl, the lovely town of San Vicente de la Barquera.

Its location is very beautiful.  We are glad we were told about it or we would never have found our way here unaided.

Then came the highlight of the day.  A visit to Comillas where you can see the Gaudi Caprice "El Capricho".  This is one of only three houses designed by the phenomenal Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi that are located outside of Catalan.

There is Andrew on one of the balconies of this amazing house.  Gaudi was considered a genius by some and a madman according to others.

We did a tour of the house and the many amazing features of this fantastically talented and imaginative architect's genius was explained to us.

The stain-glass windows contain intricate images of birds and musical notations.  The bird is playing a piano and the bee a guitar. GaudiT designed these because the owner was a keen music lover.  The wood work of the doors and windows are the originals.

Antoni Gaudi was only 31 when he designed the house for the brother-in-law of the Marquis of Comillas who was a friend.  It was the first of the houses he designed in his lifetime and it was built in only two years competed in 1885.

Our exhausting day ended at a posada in the small town of Cobreles which is a short distance to the bigger town we want to visit tomorrow morning.  This wonderful looking church is the last photo of this action packed day.  We actually crossed from Asturias to Cantabria where Comillas is located.

I also want to mention that we came across many figures with backpacks struggling along in the rain.  They were obviously walkers/pilgrims walking the Camino Santiago de Cmpostela.  But what puzzled us was that all the signs indicating the Camino de Compostela were on our side of the road which was heading eastwards not westwards.