I can’t begin to express how much I love Gijon. After yesterday‘s spectacular day, we took another ride up into the mountains to a town called Viegas. We drove through mountain hamlets of Parque Natural de Somiedo stopping for numerous Polaroid moments. Here are the pictures that we took on the ride up to Viegas. 

The next set of pictures were taken in the village of Viegas where the Somiendo Ecomuseum is located. The museum basically is a tour of some of the houses. We did not avail ourselves of the tour. We did go into the one bar/Café in the village and enjoyed a cup of café con leche . There were two young women in the café and we started up a conversation with them even though they spoke no English and I speak very little Spanish, but we did have a lot of fun trying to communicate. Found out that the kids go to a school that is only 8 km away. I was concerned since these villages are so small. I was just wondering where the schools were. The ability to meet local people is one of the great advantages of traveling on your own. 

We got back into the car and I noticed this very narrow road leading up into the village so I got the bright idea of driving up there to see what there was to see. After driving a couple hundred yards it came to a dead end. There was no place to turn around. I had to back down this road. It was an absolute absurdity. To make it even worse we snagged the trim on the right front fender therefore damaging our rental car. Here is a picture of the road and a witness to this travesty.

Driving back to Gijon, a guy stopped us and tried to fix the trim which at this point was out about a 75° angle from the car. Unfortunately, the fix didn’t last very long. We discovered that we had to drive about 30 miles an hour or under in order to keep the trim from going out at a bad angle. It was a very frustrating drive back to town. I was very upset because even though we had insurance on the car, there was a $1900 deductible. Fortunately, there was a good ending to the evening as we found a delightful little restaurant where we were able to have octopus and a delicious white wine. Here’s a picture of how they pour the wine at this restaurant.