Asturias

So I decided to take a long weekend guided tour with classmates this last week. The tour was put together by my school, so there was about 75-80 students, 90% chinese, that all went on a double decker bus throughout the province of Asturias in the northeast of Spain. My crew consisted of Kristen (Amberican), Marlene (German) and Kooroush (Persian). We were an odd group but we complimented each other I think.

Asturias looks more like it should belong in Scotland or some other northern continent, not Spain. It is completely green with mountains and lakes...I loved it! Obviously it rained while we were there, hence why all is so green!

We started out in Oviedo, saw the cathedral and ate lunch there. It is a pretty peaceful city, the capital of Asturias in fact. But we went a little outside of Oviedo to a pre-romantic building. I guess it super unique since its one of the only pre-roman buildings in Spain, or Europe or something that is still intact. In fact they are in the process of restoring it still. We then headed to our base village of Candás where we stayed in cabins! SO COOL. The pueblo is super small and there is no one outside after 10pm which is super strange for Spain...but anyway they had cider! haha...btw, natural cider (without gas) is the "shit" here. Its a big thing for this area of Spain. Its pretty good, you have to pour only a little bit into your glass, but from super high above the glass to create bubbles (carbonation) and then you pound it like a shot. Interesting none the less.

The next day we went to Gijón. The largest city in Asturias, it has a great rivalry with Oviedo. On the outskirts of the city we went to a heritage site that shows the remains and a museum of the first Asturianos. Pretty neat. A bit odd though since the site is surrounded by an industrial mining zone ad the city's port. Other than that it was pretty cool. We then took off to the city where we had 6 hours to be tourists. Its a beautiful city. We hiked up to a park that overlooks the city. The sun came out for a few hours so we stayed up there lying on the grass, making flower necklaces and drying our wet socks from the rain..hah. On our way down we saw a wedding, they play bagpipes in Irish get-up when the couple exits the church! Celtic culture is so engrained in this area of Spain. We then had traditional Asturian 'fabada' which is a bean stew with sausages. HOLY MOLY, it was great! But UBER filling. We were miserable after...but we were entertained be a crazy guitar player and an old man who had a thing for Kristen.

After Gijón we took of to the self-proclaimed "most beautiful pueblo in all of Asturias called Cudillero. Its a super little town with not a whole lot to see. But the view is quite incredible. We were actually more fascinated by the snails..but yeah, it was cute.

The next morning we set off to Parque Nacional: Picos de Europa where we drove up to the top of the park to see 2 lakes. The view was incredible, but again I was more fascinated by the cows..haha. Oh How I miss happy Californian cows At one point I became one with the herd. The town at the bottom of the mounains is called Covadonga. It was pretty sweet. The cathedral was awesome looking and they have a chapel built INTO the cliff! Hard to explain, check out the video below with the pics. After we left Covadonga we had a super long bus ride back, almost 7 hours, whew!

But all in all, I met knew friends, spoke a lot of Spanish and got to know a little more of Spain! <3

music by Juan Quesada "Asturias"