Heading east…

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Hola!

Up this morning about 7, and repacked and down for breakfast at 8. Wonderful meal; we will miss Casona de Cefontes, although I still have NO idea how to find it without Emmy II! Let’s hear it for our GPS! Finally out the door a little after 9 a.m. to make our way across the top of Spain towards Santander, where we will be staying the next three nights. No problems with the drive, but when we arrived at Campo Posada, no one home…I knew we were early, but thank heavens for international cell phones! R called the contact number, and connected with the grown daughter of the house, who promised that someone would be there in 10 minutes – and by golly, they were!

I had been debating if we should just stay at Cefontes for these three days, as we liked it so much, but finally decided that a change would be good for us and that we needed to stick with our original plan. Campo Posada is in a small village near Santander, and very close to most of the caves that we want to see. We are in room 7 on the third floor – no lift – but it is nice, clean and comfortable and has a nice balcony with a great view over the backyard and countryside; looks like some sort of estuary; R is wondering what will happen when the tides come in! While our last hotel looked like it had been designed and decorated by an artist, the Campo is quite basic, but there are lovely stone walls in places, as well as beautiful beams in our bedroom; very nice, just not fancy, but that’s fine.

Dropped the luggage, then had to head almost all the way back to Gijon for our first cave visit of the day – Tito Bustillo. We had been really looking forward to this one, as it was not on the roster of the other caves we’ve been visiting, and somehow we thought that meant it was special. So, drive an hour and a half back, and arrived at the cave, only to be told that we actually had to go 200 m. further down the road for the tickets…how dumb is that? Don’t worry, it gets WAY worse! There were 13 people on our tour, and one guide – and not one Spanish speaker among us. I believe there were Americans, Brits, Irish, Germans and Poles – so I guess that means that we weren’t able to understand anything, and were all just dumb foreigners. The guide led us on a silent hike for about 15 minutes into the cave – showed us one panel of paintings, which we were allowed to look at for 2 or 3 minutes, and then we had another 15 minute silent hike back! R and I are SO unhappy. I mean how much does it take to at least learn the words for “deer” “bison” and “reindeer” in several languages? It is not that hard! Even I know some of them!! We were so disgusted that we just walked out, and didn’t bother with their museum – 200 m down the road where we got the tickets…very, very disappointed.

So…now we had to turn around and head back toward Santander for our next cave appointment, El Castillo, just on the far side of Santander. We were absolutely starving by then, so stopped at one of the Autovia rest areas for sandwiches and drinks; Pepsi for me, and H2O for R. (I thought it was very interesting that they actually have a bar in the rest area; just what people need – a drink or two to get back on the Autovia going 120 km per hour!!) Arrived on time at our next cave, El Castillo, to see our old buddy Jose, from yesterday’s Hornos de la Pena.
This time, we had a wonderful tour of a wonderful cave! Besides us, there was an Italian family currently living in Luxembourg with two lovely elementary school age daughters. Everyone was speaking something – Italian, Spanish, English – even a bit of French! Our guide, Alberto, was terrific; his English was fine, and the cave was great. El Castillo was the first cave discovered in this complex, and included both prehistoric remains from peoples living in the cave entrance, as well as paintings and engravings. Albert I of Monoco financed the original excavation of the cave, as he was apparently an avid explorer, and the excavation went through 25 actual levels of habitation. El Castillo is also famous for their negative image hand prints, which are all over the place! By negative image, someone would hold their hand up against the wall (always the left hand, for some reason) and then paint would be blown up against the hand, which, when removed, left a negative image. There is one section that contains something like 64 different hand images. Alberto said these were the oldest paintings in the cave, going back 50,000 years, but both R and I think that might be a little exaggeration. However…there were wonderful horses, aurochs and bison, as well as something which could be interpreted as two fish! Finally, there were hundreds of large (about 5” across) red dots, just running down the side of one of the caves – directional arrows possibly? Who knows?! At any rate, the cave was wonderful.

When we had finished El Castillo, I mentioned something about doing Las Monedas tomorrow. As it turns out, Las Monedas is about 600 m. away from El Castillo, at the same level, and Alberto asked if we wanted to do it right then! And we said yes! So – two more tickets, and a trudge around the mountain, and we were the last two people in the day into the cave! Las Monedas was only discovered in 1952, and is truly a spectacular geologic cave – beautiful formations; cave bacon, lots of flow stone, some amazing coloring – everything from pure white to black, and lots of colors in between. Very, very enjoyable. It is SO unfortunate that we can’t take pictures in the caves, but those are the rules, and we will abide them, no matter HOW hard it is!! Las Monedas has only one room with paintings, and they are judged to be among the newest we have seen – ranging from 11,000 to 8,000 years ago. However, in once place, a beautiful horse was painted actually on the BOTTOM of a cave formation – and when you shine the light into the pool of water below it, you can see the horse’s reflection – just magical!

Finished up the cave about 6:30 p.m. and headed straight back to Campo Posada. Now we have an entire free day tomorrow – one more cave to go on Saturday! I’m going to see what we can accomplish in the way of wash…hmmm…once we get to Paris, we’ll be fine, as there is a washer in the flat – but need to make it there first!

More later while we again try and figure out dinner!

Much love,
m
xxx

We’ve walked where Cro-Magnon walked!

Wednesday, 30 May 2012

Hola!

Whew – we’ve had a mighty busy day; not sure where to start! Possibly, at the beginning…Up at 6 a.m. to be out of the hotel by 7 a.m. – which means missing breakfast, which neither of us are happy about – but we have a 10 a.m. appointment at the Cueva Hornos de la Pena and wanted to be on time. Wound our way to the autovia toward Santander, and we were off! I can only say that it is a VERY good thing that we left early, as finding the cave was more than challenging! I’m not sure why Emmy had such a difficult time, but she kept trying to get us to drive over pedestrian walkways, or through fields with no roads…fortunately, Robert is an expert at navigating through stretches like that – he can see the broader picture, and he managed to get us on the right roads at last – although we did make it through some very small and odd patches of pavement. Finally found the road to the cave – which of course meant parking at the bottom of the hill and then walking up…why is it always that way with caves, we ask ourselves. Arrived about quarter to 10, and guess what?? No one there!! Oh my…fortunately, there was a number posted on the entrance hut, and I had thoughtfully remembered my cell phone … so, R called and we were told to just wait where we were, and someone would be there…so…a very nice man named Jose showed up about 20 – 25 minutes late. We were thinking – if we hadn’t called, would he have shown up at all?? Fortunately, it seems like the reservation system works, though, as he had our names – and only our names on his list! The really great thing was that we had our own private tour – just the three of us in the cave!

Cueva Hornos de la Pena is a decorated cave, not a painted cave – that means that while the cave was forming and still wet, someone drew figures on the walls with either a hand or a stick, but there are no paintings. We entered into a very wide cave mouth, and right away, there was the first figure – very plainly at the cave entrance, a horse had been drawn that is estimated to be 22,000 years old. Also, unlike any other cave we have ever visited, there is evidence that the people actually lived part of each year in the exterior portion of the cave, but used the interior cave for their decoration. This cave has to be the wettest we have ever entered – mud in lots of places, and it was for the most part, very narrow with very low ceilings – lots of bending and stooping. In addition to the horses there were aurochs and deer, as well as the figure of a man! The man was very unusual – it appears that he was wearing a bird type mask, and a tail – it is surmised that perhaps he was some sort of shaman or leader of the group – but as there is no way to confirm, you can just let your imagination run wild!! Additionally, there were several “symbols” on the walls, basically straight lines within a box, which are just seen in this area and are very unusual. Jose turned out to be a wonderful tour guide – his English was spotty, but he spoke Spanish very slowly, and we did manage to understand what he was saying – and as we spent more time together, his English got better and better, so a good time was (I hope!) had by all!

By the time we were finished here, as we started so late, we figured we would probably be late to our next appointment, which was another 48 km away in the village of Ramales de la Victoria, especially as we had to grab some sandwiches for a really quick lunch. And we were. Made it to Ramales, which is also the cave of our last appointment of the day, Covalanas, but absolutely no signage to Cullalvera! R finally found someone in the Tourist Information Office who showed him how to find the cave, as well as told him that they had now closed for their lunch break…so…we went into the local grocery store looking for Magnum Classics – but could only find the boxes of four … which we bought…yes, we did! Drove back to Covalanas and parked and ate our ice cream bars … all four of them!! (I know…no dessert for us tomorrow!) We had about an hour to kill, so we napped in the car – beautiful warmish and breezy day – and we both needed naps!

Then, Cueva Covalanas … from the parking place to the cave entrance was about 750 m. – most of which went straight UP! UGH! Finally got to the top, where Victoria, our next tour guide, was waiting for us! This time we were joined by another couple from Connecticut, who were spending their holiday in this area. They told us that it had rained for the entire last week, and that it was good to see the sunshine! We were VERY thankful that our weather had been so terrific – especially in England and since we’ve been in Spain! So…into the cave, the four of us and Victoria. She was great. Her English was excellent, and she really loves showing people around. Covalanas is a painted cave, and is unusual because of the large number of female deer that are represented. The cave itself is very dry (looks rather like a slot canyon in AZ, with rounded openings where a river had at one time rushed through) and the painter(s) used the rock to help get some perspective into their paintings. As there were no lights in the cave – just hand-held flashlights, Victoria was able to use the light to really demonstrate how the paintings must have looked in flickering light thousands of years ago! The figures seemed to be animated. Very unusual, and very, very interesting!

By the time we were out of Covalanas, it was almost 5:30 p.m. and it was over 2½ hours back to the hotel…whew…very tired, even though most of the way was on the autovia and we made good time. Back to our Casona about 7:15 p.m. and started the search for an Italian restaurant. (R had suggested Italian food earlier, and once you get the taste for something…) Only problem was finding a restaurant that was open! So…the best place in town, Café Nonna, wasn’t answering their phone – turns out, they don’t open until 8:30 p.m. We looked for several other places, but couldn’t find information anywhere on opening times – and nobody answering the phone! Tried Café Nonna once again, and miracle of miracles, someone picked up the phone! So – back into town we went. Finding a parking space was impossible, so we finally parked in one of the centrally located underground car parks and walked the quarter mile to the restaurant. By this time it was 9:15 p.m. – and I think we were the first people in the restaurant! R ordered vegetable soup, followed by ravioli with spicy sauce. I ordered Ensalada Italiana and spaghetti bolognaise – and the salad came with Thousand Island dressing all over it! YUM!! I have SO been missing creamy salad dressings! Dan was able to find me a honey mustard dressing at their house, which was great – but this was such a terrific surprise! All food very good, but I did want to get out of there while it was hopefully still light enough to get back to the hotel. Didn’t quite make it, but it doesn’t get really dark here until almost 10:30 p.m. so driving wasn’t too difficult. Now back, blogging, and hopefully getting to bed VERY soon!

Have moved first appointment tomorrow to the afternoon, so that we can have breakfast, a leisurely check out, then move to our new hotel in Suances before our first cave of the day!

A general observation. The scenery along this part of the north coast of Spain is breathtakingly beautiful. A lovely coastline with Rias (inlets from the sea at the mouths of rivers), backed by high, craggy limestone mountains inland, all very green with forests and fields. Neat farms, gorgeous stone buildings. What a place!

More later!
m
xxx

Our VERY odd GPS…

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Hola!

We woke to another lovely, sunny day in Spain – even though the weather forecasters had predicted rain last night and today! However…In all the preparation for our trip this year, I had done some but not a huge amount of planning for the “caving” part in Northern Spain. So, this morning, we began in earnest, and it took us a good 2½ hours to finally settle things appropriately. As it turns out, ALL of the caves in the region are closed BOTH Monday and Tuesday!? Unfortunate…however, as we are going to be in the area for a week, we should be able to figure things out and see the caves we want to see. We started by Robert, speaking Spanish, and the owner also speaking Spanish, contacting Tito Bustillo cave, one of the most famous in the area, and getting us a reservation for Thursday afternoon. From there, we discovered a site that had access to reservations at six of the other area caves. We are now booked for three caves on Wednesday, two caves (and a potential third) on Thursday, and one each on Friday and Saturday. We will need to get out and about fairly early tomorrow, so will have to check and see if there is any way we could have breakfast a little early.

And speaking of breakfast! It turns out, that we’re the only people staying at this incredibly lovely inn at the moment! No idea why, as it’s truly stunning – in fact, R has moved it up past Yacht Classic as his favorite hotel of the trip! Breakfast downstairs was delicious – starting with freshly squeezed orange juice and a gently toasted ham and cheese sandwich! From there we were offered fruit, cereal, yogurt – but settled on a basket of croissants, homemade cake and cookies – all wonderful!

We couldn’t believe it, but it was really 11 a.m. before we were ready to go out! So, as the caves were closed today (which still sounds odd…) we decided to head to Oviedo to see the sights – and anyone who has seen “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” knows there are sights to see! In fact, there is a life-size statue of Woody Allen (the movie’s director) in town, and apparently they have trouble keeping his glasses on, as people keep stealing them! They were definitely missing (or parts of them were) this morning!

It took about half an hour to reach Oviedo, and it’s quite a lovely small city (the movie told the truth!). In fact, we came in about mid-day, and most of the city was already closed for lunch! (We were thinking that in other Spanish cities we have visited, among them Barcelona and Valencia, things didn’t shut down like this at all!) In fact, it was downright spooky, the deserted streets! We found parking for the car a block away from their central park – which was, indeed, packed with people – maybe this is where they all are? We never found out exactly what was going on this particular Tuesday, but they were setting off fireworks (which scared me to death!) every hour on the quarter…BANG!

We stopped off at the Tourist Information Office and got a slightly larger area map, as well as information on restaurants for lunch. Then we strolled through the park – WOW! I didn’t know this, but the Celts who settled in/visited the north of Spain left behind them the tradition of bag pipes! Who knew? We followed some bag pipe music, which brought us to the center of the park. A band (without pipes) was playing music in the pavilion; there was a market going on in the outskirts; people were everywhere sitting on the grass (this is DEFINITELY not Paris!) picnicking; lots of kids and dogs and balloons! Terrific!

From the park we decided to find a place for lunch, and followed the map to Calle Gastona which is near the old part of town. More music – this time bagpipes, drum and accordion – a not unmusical combination! – and picked a restaurant at random – La Pumarada – and in we went. (Would have loved to sit outside, but the smoke was VERY heavy…)

Oh, and did I mention that this part of Spain speaks a language known as BABLE? (NEVER heard of that, either!) So, we did have some problems with the menu … until our nice waiter found a menu that had Bable, Spanish, German, French and some English – which was quite a menu, I’ll tell you. We both ordered salads to start – lettuce, tomatoes and onion. Then for mains, I ordered their beef entrecote which came with an Asturian cheese sauce, fries and more salad. Robert ordered a bowl of fresh clams which came in a butter and garlic sauce. My steak was so huge that I had to have Robert help me with it, so needless to say, we did have a big lunch. (One problem, though – we had no idea that when we thought we were asking for a GLASS of wine for Robert, we actually ordered the whole BOTTLE, but as it was house wine, it was only 9 Euros…but still…for the record, he did NOT finish it!)
As we were right on the edge of the old town, we detoured around several streets – and mostly deserted plazas to take some pictures. Oviedo is an old and beautiful and spotlessly clean city! Very nice (although I still prefer Gijon…which I incorrectly blogged was also known as “Xijon” – it’s “Xixon” – try and say that three times fast! (Apparently I don’t have enough saliva to say it correctly, or at least that’s what R says…)

Back into the car and a quick exit out of town -- streets totally deserted, as I said! Headed back to the hotel, arriving a little after 3:30 p.m. Hard to say exactly where the day went! Especially as I then went promptly for MY siesta; R having Caltech work to do. Up about 6 (!) and R sound asleep in a chair (told you they were comfortable!). Blogging now, and then we will again pull ourselves together and make the trek into Gijon for tapas for dinner. Lovely day; very relaxing!

Oh! Emmy II, our GPS from Turkey! Our Garmin GPS has a variety of voices for you to choose to guide you. We’ve always chosen the British female – whose name is Emily; we call her Emmy, as she is part of the family. However, Emmy does have her share of idiosyncrasies – in Tucson, her pronunciation of Spanish names is terrible (and you thought my accent was bad!) – but her abbreviation interpretation is even worse! For instance, we are currently in the area known as Asturias, Spain. One of the roads we took today is labeled AS-1 – and she has translated the “AS” as “American Samoa”…thus, we’d be heading along, and get the instruction “turn left on American Samoa one” – which shorted to the word “ASI” – very confusing…

More later!
Much love,
m
xxx

I’m in love with a city that I can’t pronounce!

Monday, May 28, 2012

Hola from Spain!

But first things first…Up this morning before the 5 a.m. alarm … 4:30 a.m. to be exact; showered, repacked and ready to go by 5:30. We have left ALL of our Turkey books with Dan and Phil to mail back to us (bless their hearts!) and have restocked with our Spanish and French books/maps that we’d sent to them before we left Tucson. I was again concerned about weight – forgot to mention, that when we left for Europe, our luggage weighed on the order of 33 kilos – and we are allowed 40 on EasyJet, so I figured we were doing pretty well. However, by the time we left Turkey, the weight came in at a whopping 38.5 kilos, so we made it by a margin of 1.5 kilos! Whew!

Had a nice visit and breakfast with Philippa until about 6:30, when we decided to get on the road (not knowing how much traffic we were going to run into). Hard to say goodbye to she and Dan, as we had such a terrific weekend, and we’ll miss seeing Leo – but they do Skype, so that is definitely in future plans! Did the drive in about an hour and 45 minutes; it’s farther than I thought! And Emmy only froze up once, which was difficult, but manageable. (She is definitely going in for a frontal lobotomy when we get home…) Over the weekend, Robert downloaded the detailed Spanish map into Emmy II, which we will now be using in Spain, and we don’t have to worry about Paris, as we’re not planning on renting a car there. Turned in the car and walked to the terminal and right up to a check-in counter! We were thinking they might make us wait until 2 hours before flight, which is when the usual check-in process starts, but they very nicely took our bags and we were on our way!

Stansted really has an interesting security system. The bins for people to place their things in are automatically cycled around the counter – you take what you need, slip them through the scanner, then they go back down automatically into the conveyor to head back for the next people to use. Then, if something doesn’t pass muster, the scanner automatically diverts it to an internal counter, and then in order, they are going through. I was amazed to see two people in a row who don’t know what a quart size bag is – one gal tried to take three separate plastic bags through! But the agents were really nice and handing out quart-size bags on a regular basis!

We had a couple of hours to kill, so had some snacks and read books until time to get to the gate. We were (surprise!) first in the Speedy Boarding line (yet again!) and on to the plane got our favorite window and aisle on the first row next to the door. The flight was about 1 hour 40 minutes, and voila, there we were, in Asturias, Spain! We had worn shorts as it was so warm in England, and believe it or now, it was colder in Spain! Very surprising!

Found the Hertz van and were driven 150 meters to their office to pick up the car. Do have to admit that it is very interesting renting a car from someone who does not speak your language! You don’t have to talk about extra insurance or anything at all! Just sign your name and go, which is what we did! We have a very nice Hyundai, fairly new. Emmy II gave us terrific directions and in a few minutes we were whizzing out of the airport and heading toward Gijon and Casona de Cefontes.

This is the place where I’d been communicating with someone who knows no English, but does speak French – so…I was very surprised to find that instead of being out in the country, like I’d thought, we were instead on a hill overlooking the city of Gijon, in the ritzy suburbs! Gijon is only 2 km away, right down the hill.
The Casona is really lovely – set in beautiful grounds with lots of flowers blooming everywhere; the house smells so good! We have a junior suite, which has plenty of room – LARGE flat screen TV (nothing in English; why am I not surprised?!) including a nice working area and two very comfy chairs … in one of which R is currently resting his eyes…great bathroom; beautifully decorated, with lots of windows and plenty of light; very pleased!

We settled in, as we’ll be here for three nights, and then headed out to explore the area. We got a great map of Gijon (and I STILL cannot pronounce it – it’s supposedly pronounced “Xijon” which doesn’t help me one bit!). Down the hill just a couple of kilometers, and there we were at the sea front! Just beautiful! We parked the car in an underground parking garage, and made our way to the beach. I think the wind is pretty chilly, but there are people in the water nonetheless. We found our way to the “old town” area -- dating back to the Roman times. They have done a stunning job with their Roman walls and remains; there is also to a museum (closed Monday) which we will try to get to in the next few days.

I’m hopeful that the photos show off a bit of the city, as it was really, truly lovely! Interesting architecture and great use of tiles and colors. We went through a very striking church in the old town section, and they were in the process of doing some renovation work. We watched one gal apply gold leaf to the ceiling, and looked at boxes and bags of tiles, all, I’m sure, destined for something – like a colossal jigsaw puzzle! Walked over to the marina and along the wharf. Several restaurants have been recommended to us, but the problem we’re facing now is that we had sandwiches earlier in the day (thank you SO much, Dan!) and now waiting for the dinner hour to start – 9 p.m. or so, I’m starving…and cannot wait that long! So, we’ve resolved that tomorrow we’re going to have a good breakfast here, then eat our main meal at lunch time, and the probably do tapas or light dinner tomorrow evening around 9 p.m. Filled in tonight – yes, folks, it’s true – at McDonald’s, which had the advantage of being open on a Monday and serving food before 9 p.m. Lovely downtown area; we will definitely be back! Popped into a supermarket for water, picked up the car and headed back to our Casona. In for the night!

More tomorrow!
m
xxx