We had a lazy day. This morning we took a short walk along a small river (small even by NM standards) to a tiny town on the outskirts of Llanes.
We spent the middle of the day indoors in our airbnb enjoying the rain outdoors, and thunder and lightening, the first on this trip.
After the lightning stopped, but not the rain, we went to the same restaurant as yesterday for lunch (3:00 pm). It was fine, but we didn’t enjoy the food as much today as we did yesterday. We planned to order 3 dishes to share (1 first and 2 seconds). After we’d named the two seconds the waiter said with his voice and his hands “Enough.” And, of course, he was right. We only ordered the two dishes and we brought some home with us.
The weather cleared up later in the day and we took a walk along Paseo de San Pedro, the cliff walk along the ocean on the northwestern edge of the city.
Walk along Carrocedo River. We were surprised they called it a river.Village of PancarFlowers on a fenceA house on our way out of the village. It’s not unusual to see houses built over streams like this. Paseo de San PedroTaking in the view
Highlights from today: We explored the other two beaches in Llanes at both low tide and high tide. And had a great lunch in between.
Playa de Puerto Chico, low tideFamily on Playa de Puerto Chico, from abovePlaya de Puerto Chico from abovePlaya de Toro, morning, low tide. A very rocky beach.Playa de Toro, afternoon, high tide, pretty much the same place as low tide photo. Many of the rocks are now under water.Playa de Toro, on the sand, low tideOur waiter at Sidreria La Amistad. We’d ordered first and second courses for each of us, that we intended to share. He told us we’d ordered too much food and suggested we leave out something. He was right! We had plenty to eat. This has happened to us a number of times in Spain. Waiters will tell us the portions are large and we don’t need as much food. Later, I was taking Charlie’s photo when the waiter appeared and he playfully joined in the photo.Ensalada templada, warm salad. But all that was warm was the slightly crisped wedges of cheese on top. It was as good as it looks. We also had rice with seafood and lamb chops.Outside Sidreria La Amistad.
In a remarkable coincidence I just ran across this article (https://medium.com/globetrotters/stacks-cracks-and-arches-985cfa542b28) describing a section of the coast of Wales. The rock formations are very close to the ones I showed in yesterday’s blog post “The coast of northern Spain”. And his videos look a lot like the videos took, including the wind noise. I guess sea coasts are similar all over the world.
We have walked several Caminos along the north coast of Spain and they all have been beautiful with stunning views. Yesterday we walked along a coastal path that was different from other ones we have seen.
The rock making up this coast is apparently softer than usual rocks and gets worn away by the ocean waves. This creates a rugged coastline with many inlets. Sometimes the rock wears through creating a short tunnel that then opens on the top creating a hole where the ocean waves come up. They call these “buffoons” or bufones. They make interesting sounds and when the tide is high and the ocean rough they shoot up water 10-20 feet in the air.
This is connected to the ocean under the rocks. You can see the surf coming through the tunnel. There are many arches like this. All the rock surrounding this was worn away by the waves over millions of years.
I thought I might be too tired to blog tonight but think I’ll give it a try. It always helps to pick out a few photos to get going. We caught a bus this morning to a town that is a little past where we stopped walking the camino last week. We wanted to walk a bit more of the camino starting there. We chose an alternate route that goes along the ocean’s edge. (The main camino there is more inland.) Once the bus let us off, it took a bit of walking off-camino to get to that alternate camino path, but it was worth it. We didn’t have much info about this path. The single guide that suggested it as an alternate route didn’t give us much info except a map. We ended up being awed by it. Charlie said “if this were in the US, this would be a national park.” I agree. Well, at least a state park. But it’s just another amazing walk along Spain’s north Atlantic coast. We saw about 6 other hikers the whole time.
We finished our walk in Ribadesella and had an excellent menu del día there. Then we caught the little Feve train back to Llanes.
We ended up walking about 8.2 miles total with 270 feet up and 390 down.
We were walking through moors along ocean cliffs, mostly along a pretty good path.We passed beautiful inlets and archesI said it was “mostly easy”. We did have a few steep places. This was almost a small cliff we had to go down. Both of us ended up doing it sitting down.We saw mountain goats! Well, this one was wearing a red collar so he/she might not have been a wild mountain goat.After a few miles we came across a bench and then a picnic table. These were the only human-added things we came across. Well, except the livestock and some fences. And a few trail signs. Charlie made the joke that, at least we didn’t have to wait in line to sit on the bench. If you read our blog from last year you might remember the bench called “The Most Beautiful Bench in the World”. We did have to wait in line to sit on that bench.Another great view with an arch
Yesterday we traveled from to the city of Oviedo (population 220,000) to the much smaller city of Llanes (population 14,000). Both population figures from 2018. It was a 1-1/2 hour bus ride.
We have an airbnb here and will stay a week before we head back to the States.
We spent much of today strolling around town, learning our way around, getting some info about hikes and tides at the tourist office, and then making some plans for how we want to spend our days here. And, of course, going to the grocery store for coffee pods for our airbnb’s nespresso-like coffee machine.
To me, Llanes feels much larger than 14,000 population. There are many many restaurants and bars and grocery stores. It’s on the camino so we see pilgrims walking through. (Today I went to a China store to get some paper to do our planning on. A pilgrim couple from Australia were in line with me. They were excited about the rubber pole tips they had found there for €1. They did look just like the $10 pole tips I got at REI.)
There are three small beaches right in town and an amazing beach cliff walk.
Sablón beach, low tide, morning sunSablón beach, high tide, afternoon sunWe think it was a yoga class Sablón beach, low tideA street in Llanes. Wouldn’t be a blog post without a picture of Charlie from behind, walking!Some fishing boats in the harbor
Hotel La Fonte, Naves, Spain. When we called she said she was full but then we got a room with her via booking.com. We paid with a credit card.
Whenever we have to pay for something we have to decide whether to use a credit card or cash. (And by credit card I mean Apple Pay using my phone.) Almost all the time we choose credit card for several reasons. (1) It is fast and easy and you don’t have to worry about change and putting it away. (2) We have a record of the payment which is useful for post-trip spending analysis. (3) It still seems kind of magical, you just double click and then tap and you’re done. It gives me a little thrill.
We don’t use a card in bars unless the bill is over $15 and we don’t use it for small vendors who will have to foot the swipe fees.
The downsides of a card are the swipe fees that the card networks charge the vendors. These are at least 2% and often more. Apple Pay gives us a 2% rebate on each charge so maybe the fees are more than that. We don’t pay the fee, the seller does but we feel bad about imposing the fee on them for our convenience. (Maybe not that bad since we almost always do it.)
Some places don’t take cards. We had a €15 menu at one place and he said they don’t take cards for paying for the menu, presumably because the menus are already a really good deal that they probably don’t make that much on. But I assume that a seller would lose some sales if they didn’t take cards.
This is a typical big tech tactic, give the benefits to the decision maker and make the other party pay the fees. Amazon does that. They give benefits to sellers to draw them in and then buyers to draw them in and then start taking most of the benefits for themselves. A process Cory Doctorow famously called “enshittification” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification)
One reason paying with a card is so easy is that everyone has these little devices where they enter the amount and you tap it with your card or phone and bang!, it’s done. We learned on this trip that those devices are rented for €24 a month. This is a trivial cost for a restaurant that uses it hundreds of times a day for fairly large charges. But for a small hotel with a few rooms it is more of a burden. The woman who told us about the fee ran a small place and only had two groups that day.
When we reserve a hotel we always used to call the place. This was a little harder in Spain because, despite Wynette’s facility with Spanish it is harder to talk on the phone. Because of this and because lots of people don’t speak any Spanish, booking.com has become the de facto standard for making reservations in Spain. The same hotel owner told us that booking.com takes a 15% fee. So if you use booking.com to make the reservation and then pay with a card the hotel pays at least a 17% fee and probably more.
We try to call but these days it can be hard to get a hold of a small hotel on the phone, they just don’t answer. That brings us to WhatsApp which is the message service that is a de facto standard in Spain. We have made reservations through WhatsApp but it is often hard to get their WhatsApp number.
One final anecdote about booking.com. We called a hotel, they actually answered and said they were full, the dreaded completo. We had found the hotel using booking.com which said there were rooms available. So we went back to booking.com and got a room at the same hotel. All we can figure is that she released some rooms to booking.com and, even though they were not yet reserved, she was not allowed to rent them herself. We found it quite mysterious.
After breakfast this morning, we headed up to the cathedral (5 minute walk) where the Camino Primitivo begins. From there we followed the camino markers to the edge of Oviedo and then beyond for a few miles. We were missing walking, wanting to get a little exercise, wanting to see the Primitivo.
We thought we’d be able to catch a bus back but the schedule didn’t work out so we called a taxi. 16 euros. Well worth it.
Here are some more photos:
Once we got out of town, a very pretty walk through rolling hills.We stopped at a little chapel for a break. Several other pilgrims were resting there. Everyone was excited about starting out on their camino. This was friendly Wolfgang from Stuttgart, Germany.Wolfgang offered to take our photo.The chapel was locked, but we were able to look inside through the window.We passed an old laundry. We haven’t seen as many on this trip as we did on other caminos.The sign is warning “Dangerous downhill for bicycles.” Note the bicycle picture on the sign. The path got very steep shortly after this. But Google maps walking directions said “Mostly flat.”Passed a church with a fountain on the side.Passed by an hórreo (grain storage place). They are square in Asturias. Rectangular in Galicia. This was close to where we ended our walk at a bar/restaurant that we had hoped would be open, but it wasn’t.
Across the street from our airbnb we have noticed these two windows always open since we arrived on Thursday (the two windows middle row, left).
Through rain or sun or cold they have been open. There has been a single coat hanging in the window most of the time so I was starting to think it was an abandoned apartment where someone moved out and left the windows open. But yesterday another coat showed up in the window, and possibly some shoes.
I know the Spanish, and Europeans in general, like fresh air, but it’s hard to imagine not shutting the windows when temps are down into the mid or low 40s at night and it is often raining. I thought, well maybe it is their drying room (is there such a thing?) and they never close the windows. Any better ideas? Wild and crazy ideas will not be rejected.
