DRAMA of the Picos de Europa

Dramatic. That's the best way to describe our weekend getaway to the Picos de Europa, a mountain range a little over an hour away from Oviedo. We had views of dramatic landscapes. We witnessed the drama of man versus nature in a race over the mountains. We had a dramatic eruption of vomit one day in the back seat of the car. We had great food. We had horrible food. The high and lowlights after the jump.

The Highlights

Scenery. My goodness the landscapes were amazing on our trip. The Picos straddle three provinces: Asturias, Cantabria, and Castille y Leon. We stayed in Arenas de Cabrales, in the heart of blue cheese country. We had a small waterfall just outside our hotel window, and views like this right across the street.

We took a few drives. And within an hour and a half we were able to see things like this after riding up a teleferico to a slightly higher altitude.

And if that's not enough, the beach is just 30 minutes away:

That may be the factor that differentiates the Picos from other great mountain regions I've visited before - the proximity of rocky mountain peaks to beautiful sand beaches. Chile has some of this, but even there it's not quite THIS proximate. The Andes are higher, too, but the difference between sea level and the peaks we saw this weekend is striking. And beautiful. Really awe inspiring.

Simple pleasures. With the Little Lady along, plans often have to change, and one thing I've noted is that really simple things are often times some of the most fun. Things that are not really scripted. Unplanned. Just going along and seeing what we see and living in the moment. One of the best examples of this happened on our way to the Picos from Oviedo. We stopped at the edge of the Picos at an area called Covadonga. The main reason for going was to visit a site of historical importance in Spain. It is in Covadonga that the King Pelayo mounted a defense of a Catholic outpost in the mountains of Asturias against very long odds. This is said to be the beginning of the reconquest of Spain. We took the obligatory pictures.

But after that we headed just a little more up the hill to the Lakes of Covadonga, which are described as beautiful glacial lakes. They were. We stopped for a good classic lunch. After lunch we saw that the field surrounding one of the lakes was filled with cows. The LL decided she wanted to go walk out amongst the cows. And since these were the most docile cows on the planet, we did it, avoiding piles of excrement in various stages of decay. And she loved it. We loved it. We ended up sitting in a pasture amongst cows with their bells clanging away. The LL was delighted. The weather was beautiful. Jana described it as idyllic. And so it was.

These are the kinds of things that are hard to plan or even anticipate. And with too many things on the agenda we might have pushed on more quickly. But we had about 2 hours to drive in a whole day. So we could take our time. And I'm so thankful that we were able to have this experience.

Food. We ate a lot of simple, good food on this trip. Given that we were in Cabrales, it should come as no surprise that much of the most notable food was connected to the region's namesake cheese. One day we stopped at a random restaurant in a town along the way on a little day trip we took (the one the the teleferico). One of the tapas we ordered was setas al tresviso. Setas are lovely mushrooms (seta is a generic term but the setas in restaurants here are always a nice, meaty mushroom), and tresviso is a sauce of cream, oil, parsley, and tresviso cheese, a local blue cheese on the Cantabrian side of the Picos. Delicious. Best mushrooms I've ever had. Maybe. I've had a lot of great mushrooms.

Another lucky find was a little bar just off the main drag in Arenas where we were staying. They had a big event going on. A race over the top of the mountains, that ended in Arenas. So there were lots of people. But this place had some tables. We ordered up a bunch of classic food. One of these was called tortu de cabrales. Basically, fried dough, not very sweet, covered with cabrales cheese, a very pungent blue. Simple, yes. Also delicious. We ate several of the other dishes and got down to the tortu de cabrales. Jana comments, "oh, I really like how light this dish is. It's a nice contrast with some of the heavier stuff." HA! Recall what this dish is (fried dough with cheese on top) and you can get an idea of what the food in Asturias is like. Not light.

For dessert with that very same meal we had cheese flan. You probably know what flan is. Custard, pretty much. I don't much care for it usually. Even when it's good. Well, this was different. It was like the best cheesecake ever. And it was made with local cheese as well, not the classic blue, but something else. Something really, really good when put together with whatever else was in this flan de queso. Good thing we walked as much as we did or the waistlines would have really been expanding.

The hotel. We stayed at a small hotel called Casa de Juansabeli. It was just delightful. Not expensive, but very well maintained and just charming. I admit I get a little nervous about hotel stays with the LL when we're all in one room. A suite makes things easier but that was not really an option on this trip. All in the same room. The folks there at the hotel really treated us well. Gave us what was clearly the best room in the hotel. And we paid a discounted rate through a booking site, booking.com on this time around (they have good coverage of small hotels in Europe). Extra big room, at least 50 square feet bigger than anything else according to the emergency exit map on the door. And the river with a small waterfall was right beside our room. It worked out great, and they had a very nice breakfast each morning. Good baked goods along with a meat and cheese tray. Could not have been more pleased.

The Rest 

It wasn't all great. We started off to ride the teleferico (an aerial tram). It was to be about an hour and a half of beautiful driving. About 20 minutes in the LL gets very quiet in the back seat. About five minutes later the vomiting starts. We pull over as quickly as it's safe to do so. We worry that maybe we missed something with egg in it at breakfast. This is how the egg allergy presents. We get her out of the car and start trying to clean up, utterly unprepared for the likes of this mess. Once she's clean enough to walk around she seems great. But we call off the day trip anyway. There are other things we can do. We head back to the hotel. Then it hits me. She might be carsick. About 15 mintues into the return trip. The remainder of the stomach contents come up. Not fun. These were VERY curvy roads. We made the tough decision to switch her around to forward facing for the rest of the time in the mountains. Not ideal, but better the tiny risk of an accident that would have produced fewer injuries rear facing than the certainty of more vomit if facing rear. No more vomit the rest of the trip.

And, while food was a highlight, it was also not. We sort of got stuck eating at the cafeteria at the bottom of the teleferico. There were two options. The cafe or the really expensive restaurant at the hotel across the street. Well, I wish I had ponied up the four times more it would have cost for edible food across the street at the hotel. My goodness. We had chorizo with eggs (the LL had spaghetti, which seemed to be ok). How can you screw up chorizo and eggs. Well, you can use chorizo not fit for your worst enemy. The chorizo was awful. How awful? So awful that I only ate one bite. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't let sausage go to waste. This was bad. It turns out that it seems Asturian chorizo (where we live now) is far superior to Cantabrian chorizo (where were were) in general. I say it seems only because we later had some chorizo in Cantabria at an otherwise excellent restaurant and the chorizo there was also not good, though at least edible. But at the teleferico cafeteria? Could not even eat it. If you're ever at the Fuente De teleferico, please do not eat at the CANTUR cafeterias. There is one at the top and one at the bottom. They are terrible. If you do go, don't blame me for not warning you.

But did those two bumps in the road ruin our trip? Far from it. The good was much greater than the bad. And the LL's carsickness actually pushed us to really take one day easy, and it paid off. We would not have seen the big over the mountain race had that not happened. And we might not have eaten flan de queso or the fried dough with cheese. So, when you're traveling in a place as wonderful as the Picos de Europa, even really bad luck seems to be lucky.