{"id":3052,"date":"2018-06-25T22:08:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-25T21:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/2018\/06\/25\/comillas-oriental-gaudi\/"},"modified":"2021-06-17T21:48:48","modified_gmt":"2021-06-17T20:48:48","slug":"comillas-oriental-gaudi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/?p=3052","title":{"rendered":"Comillas & Oriental Gaudi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Comillas Town<\/span><\/h3>\n

We spent three days at a site on the north coast of Spain, inland a little, and found ourselves a few miles away from a village called Comillas, home to one of the few houses that Gaudi built outside Barcelona. <\/span><\/p>\n

Being a Gaudi fan, I just had to pay a visit and was not disappointed. As a friend Paul commented recently, should we wish to build such a house in the UK nowadays, we would have to talk to several medical professionals before we were given permission but in the 1880’s this was seen as a “piece de resistance” for the owner, a wealthy businessman. It was built during Gaudi’s “oriental period” and this is obvious with the Minaret type tower and decorative external tiles. He was also an assistant when a “summer house, the Palacio de Sobrella” was built for another wealthy client in the same town but that day it was closed to the public. I had a good chat with Antoni himself, who was in the gardens \ud83d\ude42
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The town also had the most amazing cemetery, built on and in the remains of an old church, with a huge angel statue perched on the top of a wall, donated to the town by a local; he had the statue made to place on his own child’s crypt buried in the cemetery but changed his mind and gave it to the town. Several houses in the town were built in the modernist style, paid for by money made by local businessmen in the Americas, all fitting in neatly with the old traditional coastal style as well as the “montana” style chalet houses on the surrounding hillside just outside the to<\/span>wn.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some modernist style houses!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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The town’s monastery is currently used as a teaching college for new monks.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

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El Capricho, built by Gaudi<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

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A 1902 chair made by Gaudi, very ergonomic and comfortable.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

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The attic rooms in the house, with wooden steps to the outside terraces (right) and some furniture made by Gaudi.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

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Another example of some furniture made by Gaudi.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

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Having a chat with the man himself in the gardens….<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

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The old church yard.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Llanes<\/span><\/h3>\n

We also visited another local town called LLanes (pronounced Yann-nes) which was worth the short drive. This town has a small fishing port, a working light house, old ruins of a monastery in the older part of the city and amazing views of the coast from a coastal walk.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Gijon<\/span><\/h3>\n

We arrived at this large seaside town just in time to witness a wedding, complete with local pipers! The bride arrived in an old 1940’s Citroen, cars that the SS used to drive during the second world war. The bride and her entourage were beautiful as were the attendees, a real fashion show! <\/span><\/p>\n

Gijon is a hillside town, topped by a large park which once held the battle stations that protected the town, now a tourist attraction within the park. An old tobacco factory overlooked the old square which was full of sidre selling bars and restaurants, leading down to a marina, which years ago used to support a dying fishing activity but has now given way to the modern activities of jet skis, small yachts and pleasure boats. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Old look out posts.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

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Santander<\/span><\/h3>\n

We also paid a visit to Santander, and found it to be a bit of a disappointment. It is a port and ferry town, very industrial and commercial but around a peninsular was a thriving coastal side to the town. We found there to be very little history in the town; we walked for ages up a very steep hill to find a “funicular at the top of a viewpoint”, the funicular only went a fifth of the way up and down, and the view was only of rooftops! <\/span><\/p>\n

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View of the rooftops from the View Point! Red faced, from all the walking uphill!!<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

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Santander Bank HQ.<\/span><\/p><\/div>‘,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Comillas Town We spent three days at a site on the north coast of Spain, inland a little, and found ourselves a few miles away from a village called Comillas, home to one of the few houses that Gaudi built outside Barcelona. Being a Gaudi fan, I just had to pay a visit and was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-spain","post-preview"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3052"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3993,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3052\/revisions\/3993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samsonandsuzi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}