day 9 :

sunday, 3 june

After breakfast today, we talked with some other hotel guests about their travels yesterday, and one couple recommended we take a drive to see the gorges of the Picos and Ponga mountain ranges. We had originally thought about seeing some coastal towns, but given the cloudy skies and the fact that we'll be driving the coast tomorrow to get to our next destination, the gorges sounded like the right thing to do today.

However, our first order of business was to go to the cheese market in Cangas de Onís. We had heard mention of this weekly market several times before our trip, but didn't know if our schedule would overlap. We got lucky and happened to be here on a Sunday, so we parked on the far side of town, which had the only available parking we could find, and walked to the large church square. People were crowding most streets in this small town, winding their way along the booths and stalls, in search of the perfect cheese, or some new clothes, or an antique platter. We sampled cheeses from different stands, and returned to one where the seller was very friendly, and she was selling the creamiest cabrales (blue cheese). We were about to buy that, but tried a few more of her cheeses, and instead settled on a smoky cow's milk cheese. We bought a hunk, and even managed a few sentences of conversation with her. She wanted to know if we were from France, and when we explained that "somos de los estados unidos," she looked surprised, and said something to that effect that we didn't quite catch.

We also picked up a big bag of local broad beans so we could make fabada when we got home; the bag was about six Euros, and we've since heard that it sells for over four times that amount in Seattle. Another stand was selling "fabada kits" (as Eric liked to call them): one morcilla sausage, two chorizo sausages, and two hunks of pork in a vacuum-sealed plastic bag, alongside a bag of beans. You just throw the bag o' meat in a pot with your beans and some water, and you'll have fabada in a few hours. Too bad we couldn't bring the meat back with us.

With our newly purchased goods stowed away, we drove through the Picos de Europa, following the windy Río Sella on single-lane roads to Riaño. We passed through the aptly-named el desfiladero de los Beyos (The Defile of the Beyos – defile means "a narrow passage or gorge"). It was quite interesting scenery, but we were expecting something more dramatic, like the Gorge de Galamus we drove through in southwest France a couple of years ago. We crossed the regional border into Castile y León, and stopped at the town of Riaño to take a few pictures of the scenery. The town was not much to speak of – it's a relatively newly constructed town that sprang up primarily because it has an amazing view of the surrounding water and mountains.

On our drive back we took a mirador (outlook point) detour to get a higher view of the scenery, then drove on to Cangas de Onís for a late lunch of tapas and sidra. We got a chance to pour the sidra ourselves, holding the glass inside an open barrel set up to catch the spray and stream if you pour incorrectly. It definitely takes some practice to pour into a glass from three feet above, but we found that it helps to start pouring with the bottle just above the glass, and then move the bottle up as you're pouring. You won't win any sidra-pouring contests with that kind of technique, but it's better than missing the glass completely.

We had a relaxing evening back at our hotel, snacking on our cheese from the market with a bottle of Kirios de Adrada 2003 Crianza from the Douro river valley. After dinner, we packed up everything we could so that we could get an early start after breakfast.