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Itinerary
| Thu, Sept 25 | Liérganes, San Vincente de la Barquera, Las Arenas, Cabrales cheese cave tour, Sidrería la Zapica |
In the morning we retrieved our car from the parking garage and said goodbye to Bilbao. We set out along the north coast of Spain, across the Cantabria autonomous community, heading for Los Picos de Europa national park in Asturias.
Our first point of interest along the route was the town of Liérganes. I picked this spot for a visit to an intact Roman bridge - though now I am reading about it, it's called the Roman Bridge but it's not actually Roman. In any case, it's a cool arched bridge worth seeing. It and a mill you can walk to were built in the 1700s.
We didn't realize we were going to see an old mill, as well, and learn the legend of the Man Fish, a man who in the 1600s went missing while swimming and returned years later in an amphibious form. We walked all through the town then looked for some lunch.
We passed an open door emanating delicious kitchen aromas. I peeked in, trying to see if it was a restaurant or a private home. I scurried away after realizing it was someone's house. It smelled so good I thought about seeing if they would be willing to sell us lunch, you know, like a real travel adventure, but thought the better of it.
We landed at El Rincon de Mariano and ordered at the counter, then walked outside to find a table. I don't recall what we had. It was fine, but I feel like we didn't understand the menu very well, because people were coming out to other tables with food that looked much more like what we wanted than we ended up with. Someone was walking around offering tastes of something that I also don't recall but was quite tasty (sorry, waited too long to write this up!).
Another bridge on our itinerary was in San Vincente de la Barquera. We wanted to walk around the downtown area but there was absolutely no parking. So we drove out and across the Puente de la Maza, then parked and walked across. The bridge is long and flat, across the San Vincente estuary.
This town looks like a great place to live or vacation. There are beaches and lots of other recreation around the estuary and rivers. We saw kayakers using the incoming tide - it would be really fun to paddle the tide up the river and then float it back down.
We got back on the road, crossing into Asturias. We turned inland and started climbing into the mountains. We would spend two nights in Las Arenas, which we chose for its access to Bulnes and for the Cabrales cheese.
We got checked in for our stay at Hotel Los Picos de Europa. There were a few choices in town, but this one looked to have parking and rooms big enough for our luggage. It also - probably like the others - seemed geared toward hikers and other recreators and to have enough indoor common spaces in the event of bad weather. Luckily we did not need those.
More to come...
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