Contemplate A Coruña from the pool (or the jacuzzi)
The roofs of hotel noah _(rúa Concepción Arenal, 51) _ they are tall, the spaces are open. It does not give the feeling of entering anywhere, because at the same time you are already somewhere.
Barely a few thin wooden boards separate the reception from the cafeteria, the transfer of people entering with enthusiasm and saying goodbye with homesickness of the coffees and the soft drinks and the digestifs and the fallen arms and the languidly falling corner books, the kind that are only read in summer.
All 32 rooms have sea views
I ask for a water, and they bring me a skewer of undercooked tortilla, which I love because it reminds me of summer, of those dips in and out -because the beaches bathed by the Atlantic don't let you do a few laps, unless you think that hypothermia is the scientific name for a mushroom-, those binges on the beach with tortilla, breaded steaks, Russian salad and croquettes, and the possibility of drinking Coca Cola, which before was only bought for special occasions and when there were visitors at home.
Here you eat local product and treated with care
Although my weather is scrambled, the sky is gray, calm, cunning, leisurely. how not There is exposed wood and concrete and simple lines that stand out with the milky color of my skin barely exposed to the sun.
Sitting in this place, which is a cafeteria but makes you feel as if you were on the terrace without being, from this hotel located right in the middle of the bay of the port of Santa Cruz , you can see the skyline of ** A Coruña .** You can see maritime traffic control tower , the one in the shape of an axe, which was built after the Aegean Sea catastrophe; either the coal dome , which was done because before that the coal left the walls of the adjoining buildings impregnated with black; either the elevation of the old town and the tower of Hercules.
one of the companions, Jonathan Armengol , recounts his impression of integrated spaces, of that pleasant feeling of being nowhere and everywhere at the same time.
All rooms in this four-star hotel face the sea. 32 o'clock They bet on the views from the beginning. They could have put another line of rooms facing the park behind, the Luis Seoane, but they thought it would not be the same. Yago López, the director, thinks that it would hurt him to give a guest a room from which the sea cannot be seen. From any of them you feel in the center of the bay. With the view of the castle of the island of Santa Cruz, where the great Emilia Pardo Bazán spent her summers.
infinite beds
Big beds, big cushions, a built-in bathtub and a coffee maker -those of us who are coffee growers adore this detail, because we would be drinking it all day-. A fruit salad, strawberries and chocolate as a welcome. More than enough. Open the curtains if you don't believe it.
If it seems little to you, on the top floor there is a swimming pool and an outdoor bubble bath. With terrace. go figure walking in a bathrobe like a pop diva with a glass of white wine, in a fixed plane in which you drop it while you put a foot in the hot water and the steam snakes. Be careful there in detail, you may stay all day.
If you like to walk, the municipality of Oleiros It has very charming corners. This town of Gallic rebels is full of rugged cliffs, fine sand beaches, paths flanked by chestnut and oak trees, wild hydrangeas, floripondios, bougainvillea and araucarias.
And of Indian houses, of buildings that seem to have been brought from the colonial era, of those Galicians who made wealth in the Americas and returned to set up schools and hospitals in a country where there was nothing.
O Pasatempo de Betanzos: the garden of secrets
From wayward ports like the one in Lorbé, where you can see rafts of mussels and oysters -because practically all of them are in the south, in the Rías Baixas -. Imagine the landscape hundreds of wooden structures floating like jellyfish , with its ends towards the bottom of the sea, without ever touching it to prevent the (sea) stars from rising.
Among the companions who made the route we came to create a miniseries, a shakespearian fight between two families that own bateas, an impossible young love, a couple of businessmen from the capital, a corrupt mayor and a libidinous priest. And we believed it, between laughter and that smell of the intense sea, of churning foam and fine sand, of dimethylsulfide, to the sex of the algae and the waves, we believed it.
The sea, the sea for those of us from the coast, has those things. It is normal that we want to quench our characteristic indecision with white wine and seafood.
The illustrious canid of Armengol went crazy from smelling while we walked through Dexo Coast, that goes from the lighthouse of Mera to the port of Lorbé, while the companions advanced in the plot of our miniseries of impossible love. The one who writes recounted his college battles, the corners where beardless people kissed and had our first drinks as budding people who were well read.
Our walk ends in Betanzos
Until we found Seixo Branco vein -White Quartz-. Stretch your legs and do nothing. In a place like this, which seems chalked by a giant playing hopscotch, it is better to feel the wind in your face than to take out your mobile to take photos for Instagram. I'm sorry to disappoint you with this, but there are things that not even a thousand photos will be able to capture. As Susan Sontag said, there are few images worth a thousand words, and Oleiros has quite a few.
The walk ends in ** Betanzos .** It is a medieval and Indian setting, as if it were staged for a movie. The Indian part has its greatest expression with the Hobby Park _(Avenida de Fraga Iribarne, 63) _. They were other Indians, the Naveira brothers, who wanted to set it up on their return, and have their history and memories painted, engraved and molded in stone on their walls. Divers, lions and caves. It is an open-air museum of the places they visited, at a time when information was told by talking.
The medieval part is ancient stone and narrow streets that tell stories, a rare omelette -the pitched battle is waged between Casa Miranda and Mesón O'Pote-, and dry hydrangeas on the entrance lintel, signaling to the traveler that this tavern offers its own vintage wine.
remember Venela Campo Street and Travesía Progreso, that's where they are. Nothing like a white wine and a rare tortilla to whet your appetite. If then you have to rest for a while, in the arcades that overlook those two alleys there are terraces to bore you.
Meson or Pot Tortilla
We dined at the hotel restaurant Noa a tasting menu. We let ourselves be carried away by Armengol's criteria. Local product and treated with care -We Galicians are very purists, either cooked or grilled and little else- and washed down with local wines.
The miniseries ended up having two possible titles: The Black Pearl or Bateas and we laughed complicit in our madness, as if it were a summer love. In my case, I forgot about my internal guest and wished him a good trip.
The morning is to Galician as light to squid. We go to it with desire because if it is clear and luminous it is like coming out of a cave and being dazzled. In Galicia, dawn is like an impressionist's color test. We see little light, so we would bathe in it, we would spread it on our faces.
The hotel breakfast is gargantuan: eggs with ham, toasted bread -the kind that has so much crumb that it absorbs the light-, butter with truffle, croissants and Neapolitans, sausages and cheeses, squeezed orange juice, water and coffee.
I looked at the castle again. The tide is low and you can walk along the beach. Then I'll go back to the pool, take a dip while the colors fall into place and everyday life falls back into place.
Can you imagine waking up like this?