Oviedo

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Oviedo

Sean has been our best friend on this trip. He has guided us through cities and towns and down massive highways with multiple lanes and signposts and we have always gotten exactly where we wanted. We had come to trust Sean implicitly and thought of him as a member of the family, well as much as a GPS can be a family member anyway.

Sean let us down.

Apparently Sean does not know that a 1.6m wide car really shouldn’t try to go down a 1.61m wide road nor should a 2m long car be asked to sharp dogleg to the right on a 1.61m wide road. Apparently Sean also didn’t know about the new hotel being built and that the 1.61m road he had us on came to dead end and at a 70 degree incline. He is also unaware that it is not a good thing when ones’ beloved sits next to one saying “OHGOD OHGOD OHGOD OHGOD OHGOD OHGOD OHGOD OHGOD” and not in the good way that one likes but in the bad way where one knows that one is in trouble even though it was Seans’ fault.

We got there in the end but I’m afraid our relationship with Sean will never quite be the same again.

Anyway, our house just out of Oviedo has a fantastic view over a valley and towards another mountain and it requires me to sit on the balcony and write this while sipping on a Mahou, which is a beer from around here. Yesterday we went into Oviedo, the town billed as the prettiest in Spain, and were pleasantly surprised to find that it was indeed very pretty and clean and old. It also sells cider which the waiters pour out of the bottle held over their head to a glass held below their waist. This is supposed to make the cider taste better. Firstly, it is impossible to make that stuff taste like anything other than what it is, ands what it is is not nice, and secondly the waiters are not really that good at their job so the patrons often get splattered with the stuff. It was also my birthday so what happened after lunch in Oviedo is really a bit of a mystery to me.

Today we went is search of an authentic idyllic fishing village. If you remember what I said about Sitges you realise that this is not an easy thing, but we did it. We went to a town called Ribadesella and found that it is an idyllic fishing village with nice buildings and colourful boats and old sailors and it’s own natural harbour. It also had a tourist village on the opposite side of the wharf with basically naked people all over the beach of rocks but we won’t mention that. It was lovely.

Tomorrow we leave Spain and head into Portugal to a place called Oporto. This is where they make port. I like port a lot. It should be a good place to be.

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