Our Airbnb is in the old town and close to a lot of action. Reviews for it had some complaints about the noise at night. We took this place because it fit our needs best in other ways, fingers crossed our earplugs would be effective enough. The windows are quite modern and “soundproof”. We do hear people talking and laughing and shouting in the streets all night, but it hasn’t been too bad with the good windows and it hasn’t kept us awake.
Things don’t get going until around 10:00 so we decided to try to stay up that late and go out and see what is going on while we are normally asleep. It actually seemed pretty mellow. Just a lot of people out sitting or standing in the street talking. We passed restaurants where people were just starting their dinner. One had a line of people waiting to get in.
Here are some photos. As you probably know, cellphone photos really light things up so it was actually darker than the photos appear. They sky was black, not blue.
Dog joining in the funThe lights lured us further along the streetWe’ve walked by this place several times every day and had never seen it open until last night. It had some delicious looking sandwiches (bocadillas, hence “bocateria”, I suppose).On the other hand, we noticed old guys playing cards in this bar during the day and were surprised to see them there so late. (Old guys probably younger than us.)Mom with son holding hands and talking happilyKids still out playing
We saw this very large sign yesterday near the cathedral. I did some research about it:
It is said that the Apostle James’ tomb was discovered in the year 813. Alfonso II was king of Asturias during that time and is said to be the first pilgrim to go to Santiago to visit the tomb. (Not sure if it was called Santiago then since Santiago means St James.) Alfonso II left from Oviedo.
The Camino that begins in Oviedo and ends in Santiago de Compostella is called The Camino Primitivo. It is considered to be the original pilgrimage route to Santiago, making it the oldest known path for this pilgrimage. The term CaminoPrimitivo translates to Original Way or Primitive Way.
We have heard it is a very beautiful camino but it is a difficult camino. There are long distances between towns for places to rest or sleep and mountains to cross. So, we have not given a lot of thought to doing this particular camino.
Today we did make it to the cathedral. They had a great self-guided tour through it including the cathedral museum.
We went to the market to look for lamb. Charlie is very fond of lamb. We plan to cook it tomorrow for lunch. We found a booth in the market that specialized in lamb.
We found a phone accessories store to replace our charger that quit working.
We walked in the park again.
We came home and heated up a cod and garbanzo bean lunch we bought at the market. And made a salad. We are enjoying eating at home. But there are so many great restaurants, too. It’s a dilemma.
We rested and went out again, just to stroll around, mostly. Found the Woody Allen statue we had heard was here. Went back to the park. It was actually getting warm so we had zumo de Sandia (watermelon juice), made with fresh watermelon.
Approaching the cathedralIn the cathedral museum, we saw many small status carved from wood, from 12 and 13th century. They were great. This one was more life size and I’m not sure it is of wood. The medium wasn’t really clear on many of them.A very nice woman cutting the lamb for usBack to visit Mafalda in the park. A friendly older man asked if we wanted him to take our photo. We said yes and then he found his daughter to actually take the photos. The plaque verifies that Mafalda originated in Argentina.The streets were full of people sitting at sidewalk bars. Everywhere, on every street.Woody Allen. The plaque at his feet quotes him as saying “OVIEDO IS A DELICIOUS EXOTIC CITY BEAUTIFUL CLEAN PLEASANT QUIET AND PEDESTRIANIZED IT IS AS IF IT DID NOT BELONG TO THIS WORLD AS IF IT DID NOT EXIST…OVIEDO IS LIKE A FAIRY TALE.” WOODY ALLEN PRINCE OF ASTURIAS WADE LAS ARTS PRIZE 2002When we first walked up to the statue, the guy in black was leaning on him. Turned out he was waiting for his girlfriend. I guess they had agreed to meet “at the Woody Allen statue.”
We’ve had a very low key day. Got up around 7:30, had a great muesli breakfast in our airbnb kitchen. We made coffee provided by the airbnb in a little Italian espresso pot. It turned out delicious. We messaged our host and asked what kind of coffee it was so we could buy more and she told us it was Mercadona supermarket brand and it was decaf! We later went to the supermarket and got the non-decaf version. (We are still trying to parse why our airbnb host would provide coffee but only decaf! And also not tell us it was decaf.)
After breakfast we walked to the mercado — an indoor version of an open air market that is open every day. Quite nice. We only bought bread and olives. But we’ll probably go back every day. It’s very near our airbnb.
We walked to the Decathlon store (a ubiquitous store of inexpensive outdoor clothing and gear here in Europe) to find Charlie a fleece of some kind to wear especially in our slightly-cold airbnb. (I brought a coat on this trip but he didn’t.) He found the perfect thing there.
Then we walked to a china store and got a night light for the bathroom. Too hard to find the bathroom down the long dark hallway in the middle of the night.
Then we went to the Mercadona and got some deli food (lentils, paella), coffee (as mentioned above), milk, sidra, etc.
Came home and had a good lunch and the bottle of sidra. I liked it since it was slightly sweet.
It was nice to eat at home instead of a restaurant for a change. And out of the off-and-on rain.
The sidra has made us just want to stay at home and take a nap!
We thought we would visit Oviedo’s famous cathedral (about a 3 minute walk from our airbnb), but I think that’ll have to wait till tomorrow.
Some photos of the day:
Lots of fava beans at the mercado. But we’ll let the restaurants cook those for us. Our errand walks took us through a beautiful large park. Do you recognize Charlie without his backpack? He’s switched to the super lightweight shoulder bag that have taken on every camino since the beginning. Very handy when we are doing things in towns. If nothing else, to carry our raincoats.Pretty fountain in the parkI love snapping photos of people who are posing for photos taken by someone else. Ella and Grubb, do you recognize something here? Mafalda has gone international.Oviedo has some pretty buildingsOviedo city hall (ayuntamiento)Typical buildings in this part of town
We have several videos we took on the Northern coast that we have not posted. They give a more dynamic feel of what we saw than the still photos. This is a later one showing some surfers and an interesting rock formation.
Well, here we are in an AirBnB in Oviedo. How did that happen? After three weeks on the Camino having a great time we decided we wanted something different. One reason is that we didn’t have a specific end point. Another reason was that Charlie got tired of schlepping the 22 pound pack up and down the hills.
Anyway we’re quite happy with our decision. We will be here for five days. The Camino Primitivo starts here and, just to keep our hand in, we plan to walk one day down that to see how it is. After this we will spend seven days in an AirBnB in Llanes.
