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Published: April 26th 2017
After a lovely, farm-animal- and countryside- filled FEVE train ride from Arriondas, I arrived in Oviedo. It’d been a long day, of walking 14 km with a backpack, riding 2 buses, and riding a train, along with layover times. I stopped for some groceries at Corte Ingles (the only place I found still open in the evening when I arrived) because the next day was Good Friday, when all the stores would be closed. Then I headed to my AirBnB. I was only slightly detoured by a small Easter procession.
I was half-planning to rest a bit and then go back out around midnight to see more processions (called Madrugá), but once I’d had a shower, I knew I needed some rest. My mind was really relaxed from my time in the mountains, but my body was exhausted.
I spent two mornings/early afternoons in Oviedo and one afternoon/evening in Gijón. For clarity, I’m going to talk about Oviedo first and then Gijón.
The first morning in Oviedo, I went out to stroll the city center, basically the area near the cathedral, without a real itinerary. Small metal statues (the most popular being
of Woody Allen who made a movie there) dot that area. Those statues, combined with the charming, not too tall, colorful architecture, reminded me of Bratislava. Even though it’s got around the same population as La Coruña (230,000ish), it felt more contained and centralized. It also may or may not have been the holidays, but it felt pretty pedestrian, versus car-filled.
I happened upon an open-air goods market (usually called ‘rastro’ or ‘mercadillo’ in Spanish) in the area near Mercado El Fontan. The area near there is full of cute architecture, and it’s always amusing to wander among the tables of those kind of markets in Spain—you never know what you’re going to see. (FYI I’m always super-careful about pickpockets in traditional markets and in touristy areas. Don’t get distracted looking at stuff or taking pictures!).
Oviedo seemed to have a lot of green spaces. I checked out Campo de San Francisco, a lovely, calm park full of leafy trees. There are some fountains, snack kiosks with tables, a pond with ducks and geese, and the stone remains of a sanctuary. It’s a nice place to hang for a while.
The
next day in Oviedo was my more active day. I didn’t get from reading the website that the cathedral was 7 euros. You can step inside, but you have to pay before you wander around, so I skipped that. I’ve seen a lot of cathedrals for not being Catholic.
Nearby, though, there are two great, great museums that are free. I don’t know if the city government owns the cathedral, but they should lower the price of the cathedral and charge a few euros admission to the museums—they are really worth it!
The first museum is the archeology museum (Museo Arqueologico de Asturias), about a 2-minute walk from the cathedral. There are small lockers near the bathroom near the entrance if you want to leave your bag or coat (they had the heat on full blast).
In the basement, there was a temporary exhibit about architecture styles in Asturias in the last century. (Digression related to architecture: I was really impressed by the architecture in Asturias. I’m no expert, but they seem to be able to blend older and newer architecture pretty seamlessly. There’s also a variety of styles, and the
majority of it isn’t ugly (there are some pretty ugly multi-story buildings in La Coruña.))
But, back to the museum, it displayed artifacts and information from the Neanderthals all the way through the medieval times. It was only in Spanish, with maybe some Asturian and the titles of panels translated to English, so it may not be as informative for you if you don’t understand Spanish. There were kid-friendly exhibits throughout as well. I spent a little over an hour there with taking my time but not reading every single panel.
The second museum is the art museum (Museo de las Bellas Artes), which is in the same plaza as the front of the cathedral. The art museum doesn’t have lockers that I saw, and there was also no gift shop. I’ve found generally art museums in Spain have some more unique artsy souvenirs for presents that aren’t too expensive.
But, it itself is cool architecture. From the outside you see the façade of an old building, but once you step inside, you see that they’ve basically hollowed out the inside and built a modern building in its place. There’s evidence
of this if you look at the roof outside as well. It’s connected to another old mansion which retains its original (or at least older) architectural style.
There’s a lot of art inside, most of it interesting, stretching from medieval through modern. There was art by some pretty famous Spanish artists whose names I recognized as well. I spent around an hour and a half and would have spent a bit more, but it was closing for the mid-day.
Finally, I’d like to mention Oviedo’s bus station. I have written in my notebook, “Pretty great—lockers, info . . . “. Yes, there are luggage lockers in sizes small, medium and large (denoted by giant “P”, “M”, and “G” respectively). The medium and large ones are a bit complicated, in that you have to use a machine. There are instructions written in Spanish and English, but a security guard came over to help me and another traveler with those and pointed out the small ones to me (not immediately apparent and you don’t have to use the machine). The small ones were big enough for my travel backpack, and they’re the kind where you just
put coins inside the door of the locker then when you remove the key, the money is deposited (I think they were 2 euros). You have to pay every time you want to shut it.
Other “perks” of the bus station are that, yes, information is displayed clearly and visibly about what platform the bus will come to, and it even shows when a bus has arrived. This may seem like a normal thing for a bus station, but no, not common where I live. Most of the bus journeys in Galicia involve wandering around between arriving buses searching each one for a sign that it is yours. You can never be sure that just because the guy told you it will come to a certain platform that it actually will. Another perk is a lot of benches—indoor and outdoor, generally not so not common. And, miracle of miracles: clean bathrooms with signs clearly posted on each stall that you need to grab toilet paper before entering because it’s outside the door. No idea why they decided on that system, but it is very nice of them to be so clear so you’re not left in the
lurch on the loo. I know I’ve written a lot about this bus station, but until you live without a car and travel city to city by bus in a foreign country, you may not understand. Forgive me.
I spent the afternoon of Good Friday in Gijón, Asturias’s other main city. The two are only around 30 minutes apart by Cercanías train. My earlier observations of Asturias as less run-down-looking than Galicia were erased on that route. Much of that area seems to be abandoned or post-industrialized and pretty ugly. Even when I got off the train in Gijón, my first impression of the city was that it was very industrial.
It turns out that the train station is a bit away from the city center, which is much nicer. The geography of the city is similar to the shape of La Coruña or San Sebastian, with the old city on a peninsula, but the feeling of the city is more Bilbao . . . kind of industrial but also intelligent and quirky.
Compared to La Coruña or San Sebastian, the coastline is not as scenic. I would argue, though, that
Gijón has more character and is hipper, in its architecture, in its shops and restaurants, even in the number and variety of people skateboarding and rollerblading. The water was really calm so instead of surfers, I saw a number of paddleboarders. I came across a bookstore-café (awesome), interesting vintage shops, 2 vegetarian restaurants, and a variety of cuisines, just from strolling there one afternoon.
I wanted to check out the roman baths, but they were closed when I stopped by. The old city (Cimavilla) up the hill on the peninsula seems like a kind of run-down hipster area that also has a drinking area. It had lots of ‘full-of-character’ buildings from different eras in various forms of decay/public art canvas.
Saint Peter’s Church (Iglesia de San Pedro) is perched right next to the shore where the peninsula meets mainland. Its location provides views of the rest of the city. When I was there, they had the floats used in the Friday procession on display, including one of a statue of Jesus in a glass tomb, as if he were Snow White. I would see them later that evening when they were carried as well.
Two markets were happening that day too, one in Plaza Mayor and one in Begoña Park. I had trouble deciding what to try because there was such of variety of food for sale. Finally, I went with a tuna empanadilla (like we have in Galicia) and casadielles (an Asturian specialty--kind of a fried sweet roll with walnuts inside).
I caught the Good Friday procession that came from Saint Peter’s Church. It contrasted with being in Sevilla (the most popular place in Spain for processions) last year. Obviously Gijón was a lot smaller, less crowded, and less elaborate. But I’m glad I got the chance to experience one of Spain’s more unique traditions again. Similarities to Sevilla were that people who carried or pushed floats covered their faces with a hood that looks like the KKK (but this tradition precedes the KKK by lots of years) and that women in the procession wore all black and the traditional Spanish lace veil with hair comb (mantilla).
Summary of the two cities: Although I saw a decent number of tourists in both cities, they didn’t feel overwhelmed. For example, tourist shops were pretty spread
out, and it seemed that there weren’t zones that tourists severely outnumbered locals, like in Córdoba, for instance. I like both cities well, and I would even aim to spend 2 days in each to have a bit more time. But in reality you can spend half a day in each without really feeling pressed for time. They’re so close that it’s not a huge effort to make the trip.
I'm really glad I got to visit Asturias. It was the perfect blend of charm, beautiful scenery, and modernity. The Picos of Europa are one of the nicest mountainous areas I've been to in Spain (the Sierra Nevada in Andalucia are also beautiful, but I didn't go in the park). I continue to be surprised by how different neighboring regions are here; in this case Galicia and Asturias have similar landscapes, but the feeling of Asturias was, for me, quainter. That could just be because I've lived in Galicia for so long now that it's not novel anymore. It also shocked me how many people were speaking Asturian/Bable language/dialect. In Europe, it's so cool to go 100 or 200 miles and realize a completely different-sounding language has
developed there. Come and visit!
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