We’re on the road again today, moving further along the coast of Northern Spain heading for Esteiro Surf Lodge on the Galician coast. We’ll be spending 6 nights there, giving us an opportunity to completely unpack and chill after 18 frenetic days. However, before then there’s just the small matter of a drive into Oviedo for a walk around the old town and a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts followed by a stop in Aviles.
The Museum has one of the best public art collections in Spain, made up of more than 15,000 pieces that span from the 14th to the 21st centuries and include such prominent names as El Greco, Goya, Picasso, Dalí and Miró. It’s an impressive Museum spread across three buildings and sadly we don’t have the time to visit it as comprehensively as we would’ve liked.
We leave Oviedo and head 34km north to the old estuary port and steel-making town of Avilés. Specifically we’re headed for the Centro Niemeyer Cultural Centre, founded in 2011 and designed by the iconic Brazilian architect, Oscar Niemeyer. The bold white complex hosts a range of avant-garde theatre, music, dance, cinema, literature and art shows. Its futuristic design is emblematic of Niemeyer’s distinctive architectural style and vividly stands out against the dark, gloomy, rain soaked sky when we visit.
As luck would have it there’s an exhibition of a set of more than one hundred quite beautiful book illustrations by Salvador Dalí and we marvel at illustrations for The Divine Comedy, Life is a Dream, Roi je t’attends à Babylone and Faust, Walpurgis Night. The illustrations give us a very different insight into Dali’s unique universe and they’re full of dreamlike images that are familiar from some of his later works. It’s an enlightening exhibition that we virtually have to ourselves. Obviously, the only ones mad enough to brave the rain. We return to the car cycling along the riverside hoping that the rain will abate soon.
We head for Esteiro and as we progress down the coast the weather begins to improve. The rain stops and the sun makes an appearance. We stock up with supplies at a large well-stocked supermarket and eventually locate our house that’s 5 minutes walk from the beach and overlooking an estuary. It’s very peaceful and there’s hardly anyone around, I think we’re going to like it here.
Leave a Reply