This whole trip started Friday morning at 8a.m. sharp in la Plaza de Cervantes, where all twelve of us (Blen was "sick"), along with Fausto and Cristina hopped onto our unnecessarily large autobús with Silva, our driver, and headed out towards the north country, green Spain, the wonderful land of Los Picos y el mar Cantábrico. The seven hour or so trip took us through los Picos as we were heading into Asturias. The typical boring landscape of Castilla transformed into a vibrant, mountainous, and green region filled with plenty of trees, deep valleys, and small lakes. Spotted along the route were tiny villages, sometimes consisting of no more than 30 houses or so. What fascinated me most about these places is how no two houses nor building looked alike nor were there any advertisements on any of the buildings or bars. No recognizable stores, no chains of any kind. I was in love. I couldn't help but think that if this was in the States everyone would have the same model home, painted white with a perfect, tiny square back yard, and down the block would be a Wal-Mart or McDonalds.
The bus ride consisted mostly of everyone else sleeping except for me and a few other people at random times. We occupied ourselves by eating our bocadillos and staring out the windows in awe. As much as I can't stand bus rides, I actually enjoyed this one since I was with so many good friends. I was almost sad when we had to get off because we arrived in Oviedo...then I remembered that I was in Oviedo and was about to have a much greater time in Asturias.
We didn't spend much time in Oviedo, three hours in the town, and then another hour and a half up on a hillside over looking the town. There was this big cathedral there, which we spent far too much time in. I don't care for places that a) don't allow photographs and b) have pictures of artifacts hanging up on the walls instead of the actual artifacts themselves. Seriously. They had photos of these gilded crosses and shrouds that were allegedly supposed to cover Jesus when they took him off the Cross...but they didn't have the actual shrouds. Just the photos of them, all faded hanging in frames. Very odd.
The rest of Oviedo was pretty amazing though. It is a very large city but definitely doesn't feel like it. It's modern, full of wonderful architecture and statues everywhere (apparently it's the city with the most statues in the world or something -- and the only one with a statue of an ass...wait for the photos). And I mean statues everywhere. We couldn't walk a city block without seeing a few. There was even one of Woody Allen (which I got pretty excited about). Oviedo has such a small town feel, the people were nice, it smelled normal (for a European town this is rare), and there was an entire section of town where they just had a fish market, a bunch of bakeries, butcher shops, and cheese stores. Pretty sure I was in love and wanted to move upstairs of one of these shops immediately. Asturias and Cantabria are famous throughout Spain and Europe for their cows. It felt like I was back in Wisconsin. All the tourist shops had all these cow paraphernalia, stuffed cows, cow mugs, cow hats, cow t-shirts... I was quite content.
Even more to remind me of Wisconsin? Yes. In the large park in the center of Oviedo, besides having wild turkeys (already thinking about Thanksgiving, although you don't eat these ones I'm told), they had thousands of chestnuts lining the paths. Unfortunately the leaves hadn't started changing yet or else I would never have left the place.
We headed up a mountain, up a cow trail, on foot. Passed some old farm houses and also some farmers walking their cattle up the path. We didn't go all the way up but we went pretty far to look at two old churches/temples of which we didn't even go in...not that I would have been too enthused. I can see the complaint people give often about how they hate sighting in Europe because all it is is "Oh, there's another church. And there's a cathedral. And there's a temple." It's true. Now, I wouldn't mind that too much if these places we were visiting were architecturally amazing, and not dilapidated piles of rocks. Anything pre-Roman just doesn't do it for me. Show me gothic or Renaissance, then I'll be paying attention.
Nevertheless, I had a great time and I believe the crisp mountain air (and the somewhat cooler temperature) rejuvenated everyone's spirits and we were all quite happy and jubilant for Cangas de Onís and our dinner there at a sidrería.
Sidrería: a place where they specialize in sidra. Sidra: a carbonated alcoholic beverage similar to champagne that is produced in la España Verde. Smells like puke, tastes more like beer (with a 6% ABV too), yet really cleans out your teeth, almost like mouthwash. At first I wasn't too enthused about the taste, but it eventually grew on me. More about that during the Epicurean Diaries. And about the dinner, or at least the food served. The ten of us (Tommy and Alix opted instead to go eat pasta and pizza at a pizzaría instead of partake in our gorge-fest that was the dinner at el Conchu (the name of our lovely sidrería). And what a fest it was. We had the sidra in the middle (of course, you know, that you have to pour the sidra into the glass from on high), and nearly everyone got something different (save for me, Maya, and Kristine, who all got croquetas). We ate and laughed and generally were merry. We ended up trying each other's foods, sampling everything from the simple chicken breast to chorizo in sidra sauce to some crazy pork/turkey soup thing that Armani got.
What only added to the experience was the actually restaurant. We came in with a big group and were easily accommodated because they only had huge, long tables meant for big groups. There was only one table open, the place was jam packed with whole extended families and groups of friends eating and drinking. Everything about that place gave off such a cozy vibe. Felt like a north woods bar, plenty of woodwork and down to earth characters inhabited the place. The only thing that was out of place was the fact that the waiters took our orders on iPhones. A bit of modernity in the otherwise authentic Asturian sidrería.
While others were content after this meal, I, as usual, was up for a night cap, a glass of wine at another local to get more of the flavor of the town. After rejecting the loud Irish pub (my veto), we found a quiet, stone-walled and wood beam-supported tavern for some red wine. We stood around a big wine cask and had a glass of the house wine, which was pretty good (as it always seems to be). It was heading towards midnight and they were closing. We were the last people in there and I loved how was we were heading out the two workers were sitting down to dinner. They had a bottle of wine, a basket of bread, and a large portion of freshly sliced jamón ibérico in front of them. It was cute, I was jealous (though still stuffed from dinner so I was more apathetic), and it made me feel all warm inside...and immediately want to move up to Asturias.
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