This was our fourth day of being stuck in Santander, due to the continuing very rough seas off the Portuguese coast. To keep the passengers occupied, the ship had laid on a number of coach trips to Santander and surrounding places of interest. On the third day, the options had been coach trips to Santillana del Mar or to the Guggenheim Art Gallery in Bilboa: which I had visited or had no interest in visiting, respectively. I took the opportunity to do some planning for the runs ashore in the Canaries and Madeira, as by now the Captain was saying we would be departing in the early hours of 26 Jan and these islands were back on the plan. On our final day in Santander, there was a coach trip to explore the nearby coastal town of Comillas which sounded tempting.
It was time to head to the lower deck and see if we could get onto the Comillas coach trip. The ORCA team are part of the entertainment team. We are only allowed on coach trips, if there is space when the coaches are about to depart, as quite rightly the passengers get priority for the trips.
It was about a forty minute drive to Comillas. We were dropped a few minutes walk from the centre of the town. On the journey, our guide told us that Comillas used to be a small fishing village, until in the second half of the 1800s, the first Marquess Antonio Lopez y Lopez invited King Alfonso XII to his mansion. The King liked the climate and the Spanish royal family started spending their summers there, followed very soon, by the Spanish nobility and other court followers. This resulted in a large number of opulent houses being built in and around the town.
Within a few minutes, we reached our main destination, the El Capricho villa. This was one of the first buildings that Antoni Gaudi designed and built. Gaudi went on to become the architect of the famous Sagrada FamÃlia church in Barcelona. The El Capricho villa was built between 1883 and 1885 for the summer use of Maximo Diaz de Quijano, although he died a year before its completion. It turned out to be a stunning building. Surprisingly, the building eventually fell into disrepair, before it was turned into a restaurant and finally it become a museum in 2009.
It was time to have a look inside the El Capricho villa, which was as stunning as the outside.
After walking around the rooms, I thought we had seen most of the villa. However, there were two narrow winding stone staircases that lead to the upper floor. This was a real surprise to discover.
The upper rooms were narrower than the house, to allow for the conservatory roof.
There was still time to have a quick look around the town. We decided to leave the rest of the passengers and have a quick walk down to the beach.
We ended up walking past a park where there was a large cage in one corner containing several Macaws. What I wasn't expecting to see was one of these Macaws had escaped and was flying around the area. The owner was out calling to it and trying to encourage it to return.
finally, we reached the beach, where the sea conditions were still looking grim.
It was time to head back to where we would meet the coach.
The coach trip got us back to the ship in time for a late lunch. My plan was to have a look around Santander and head to the nearby Prehistory and Archaeology Museum. However, the wind really started to whip up and it started raining, at which point I cancelled my plan in favour of a lazy afternoon. The captain told us that evening that suddenly the wind was gusting at seventy knots for a short period and the bridge crew were forced to engage the engines to keep station alongside the quayside. This allowed the ship to not break its moorings. However, the port's gangplank was damaged during the gale force winds. It was only after the wind had abated, that a ship's gangplank could be deployed to allow a number of passengers who had gone ashore to reboard the Spirit of Discovery. The most eventful event of the sudden gale was one of the moored bulk cargo ships broke her moorings and ran aground. Two tugs were attempting to rescue her as the winds subsided. In the circumstances, damaging the gangplank didn't sound too bad.
On a positive note, this was the last big storm to hit the Spanish coast and the Captain was planning to leave Santander at one the following morning. We were still going to have a four to five metre swell almost as soon as we left the harbour. However, it was good to be back on the move again.
