Adventures in the North: Asturias

This past week was full of various fiestas, meaning I only ended up having 2 ½ days of school, which was awesome. Monday was a half day because of lunes de agua, and there was no class on Thursday because it was Día de Castilla y León (Castilla y León is the region of Spain where Salamanca is), and I spent most of the day outside in the sun trying (and mostly failing) to study. And Tuesday was free scoop day at Ben and Jerry’s—even in Spain!—which I was sure to take advantage of…more than once. Also, all the various schools in the university have their own fiestas during the school year, and the history school had theirs on Wednesday. It was really amusing because all the history students were dressed up as funny historical characters all day, like Roman soldiers and flappers. Spaniards are really into dressing up whenever they get the chance! I liked that they got so into celebrating, because for the most part it seems like Europeans aren’t all that into school spirit or school-wide activities and festivities the way American universities are. So it was nice to see all the students getting together to celebrate their school.

Friday was the last day of classes at Georgetown, and also Georgetown Day, our annual celebration/carnival/general day of craziness and fun celebrating the end of classes. It was so weird to not be there for Georgetown Day with all my friends. It’s even weirder that they’re all in the middle of studying for exams while I still have a week of class and then three weeks of studying and exams after that. I won’t get home until more than a month after all my friends at Georgetown! However, I had my own fun on Friday, which was the day the Georgetown group left for Asturias, the central-northern region of Spain. It’s always nice going on Georgetown-organized trips because 1) I don’t have to pay anything (it comes out of my tuition) and 2) I don’t have to plan anything! We left early Friday morning and drove to Oviedo, the capital of the province of Asturias. We toured the city, had lunch in the park, and saw some cool Roman buildings and the city’s cathedral. I’ll be honest, I barely listened to our tour guide Antonio because I was really tired and cold (we all were), so I didn’t really learn that much about what I was seeing, but I enjoyed seeing it regardless. That night we drove to the small town of Cangas de Onís, checked into our hotel, and had a nice dinner before crashing in bed.

Saturday was a very outdoorsy day: we visited the National Park Picos de Europa and hiked through the beautiful mountains all morning. The scenery was pretty spectacular, full of lakes and waterfalls and caves and green fields. We even got a sprinkling of snow! On the way up the mountain into the park our bus got stuck behind a herd of cows, which was kind of amusing—cows are a really big deal in Asturias. We had lunch in town, where I sampled some of the local cider and had some cider-cooked sausage for lunch. Cider (“sidra”) is a really big deal in Asturias. Traditionally, the bar tender holds the bottle above his head and pours the cider into the glass below, which produces bubbles as the cider falls. We didn’t get to see that but just had a fancy little contraption that poured it for us instead. After lunch we toured the countryside a little more and went to a cheese museum and learned all about Asturian cheese, which is called Cabrales and is soft and very strong. It was pretty interesting to learn about how they make the cheese, which they store in the caves in the mountains as it changes from milk curd to cheese. We ended the day with a quick tour of the town of Cangas de Onís. Sunday we drove to the city of Gijón, which was really beautiful. It’s right on the ocean’s edge, and the juxtaposition of the blue ocean, the green fields, and the grey mountains was really stunning. We had lunch at a beachfront restaurant, where I had fresh-caught fish for lunch and tried some of the best paella I’ve ever tasted, before heading back to Salamanca. It was a nice little trip and nice to get away before the studying gets too serious. I have one more trip this upcoming weekend, to Barcelona, then I actually have to buckle down and study for the rest of May!