I was not particularly excited for this trip because we had very little time to discuss it in class (to get excited about the sites) and the last trip to Granada and Cordoba was jam-packed and pretty stressful as a result. But, the mountains (Picos de Europa) and the sea in a quiet, tourist-free town have a magical, comforting power. We were not expecting to be so close to the water nor for the weather to be as nice as it was. Though the place we stayed at reminded me of the musty cabins of my wilderness-experiences at summer camps and the town (Ribadesella) didn’t have a lot to “do” in it, we all loved it. What a break from the hustle-and-bustle of Madrid or even our life as college students in the US. I thought the people were friendlier and the Northerners are a bit easier to understand. According to our teacher, the place has changed a lot over the past few years because the Prince is from a nearby area and likes to visit a lot, bringing in more money and I am sure more tourists will find it and fall in love with, as one British tourist site describes it, ‘unspoilt‘ Spain.

Asturias is known for its milk products and cider, but not your ordinary, Halloween, donut-dunking cider from the orchard. This cider is slightly fermented and in order to get the best (and only palatable) taste is to add air to the drink the instant before your gulp it down–and ‘instant’ and ‘gulp’ are not exaggerations. In the sidería we visited Friday for lunch we were greatly entertained by the waiters lifting the glass bottle of cider way above their heads and letting the cider pour out and down to a glass waiting in the other hand below their waist. Then, you must drink almost the entire glass in one go or you will end up making funny faces like my friends who tried to smell it and swirl it before taking sips of what had become a bitter, flat drink. The final, would-be back wash sip is always thrown away, literally over the side of the table. As you can imagine, both parts make quite a mess so the problem is partially solved by placing wooden buckets or barrels at every table to toss the last sip and for the waiters to use while pouring before they flick their wrist to allow the cup to be filled. And for those who don’t want to wait for the waiter to come over every time they get thirst or don’t know how to do it on their own without making a fool out of themselves by spilling all over the place, there are also these little contraptions that you can stick on top of the bottle to serve it. In the US, a restaurant could import the cider and make a business just out of serving it.

On Saturday we staved-off some bad weather and visited some prehistoric caves with some of the best-preserved wall-paintings and did a 4hr, 14km canoe trip similar to the huge event every August that draws in thousands of people from around the world. The river was calm with small patches of “rapids” here and there so we had to work relatively hard. Thank goodness the company had wet suits and water shoes for us or we would have been miserable in our blue jeans and tennis shoes. Lunch on a bed of rocks was accompanied by some wild horses hoping we’d leave them some sort of snacks, I think. We finished off the day by climbing up a hill to watch the sunset over the sea.

If that doesn’t sound picturesque enough for you, I don’t know what will. I think it’d be the perfect place to retire, if only I was of age…