We had some very hot weather here last week, into the 80s, and took advantage of it by taking a long walk above the city, playing golf, and going on an outing to Aviles and Salinas just north of here. I didn't take my camera golfing, but here are a few pictures from the walk Alex and I took on a path that runs along the large hill, Naranco, that forms the northwestern boundary of Oviedo, and a bunch more from the fun outing we had yesterday on the coast.
I'd been wanting to take this particular shot of the cathedral and the bigger mountains to the south for a while, but by the time I got around to it (and got clear weather in the morning to shoot it) most of the snow was gone from the mountains. This is a couple of blocks from our apartment, looking uphill towards the old part of town.
One fun thing about Oviedo, and European cities in general in my limited experience, is that they are relatively compact with a clear boundary where the country begins. Thus we go under the highway and train tracks from what feels like the middle of the city and we're immediately among the farms.
On of my greatest pleasures in living outside Fairbanks this year has been listening to all the different birds singing. Three-quarters of the year in Fairbanks is relatively birdless. I could see myself turning into a serious birder in retirement. But for now I'll try to take an occasional picture and mostly just enjoy the sounds, without worrying about identifying the species.
It was already pretty hazy in Oviedo by 11:00 in the morning, a sign of the heat. We were down the slope before the worst of it, and I am most definitely NOT complaining about the weather, but it was a scorcher.
That round white lump in the middle of the bottom picture is a new, huge, double-ferris-wheel-shaped building that has government offices and a shopping center. Unfortunately, the building's wild shape gets completely lost--so far I've looked at it from every possible angle, and there's no clear view of it except right below it, which of course is not the best angle from which to see its shape. They did not think this through. Our friend Merche works there, and Alex and I sometimes shop there while we're killing time during Annabel's dance class. That's the far end of town from where we live, which in both pictures is a ways off to the left.
We took our long walk on Thursday morning. Friday I went golfing, on the steepest course I've ever played, just gorgeous, the municipal course for Oviedo, a ten-minute bus ride out of town. Saturday we took the bus north to the coast, to Aviles, the third-largest city in Asturias (after Gijon and Oviedo), and spent a couple of hours wandering through the old part, having coffee in this plaza, and shopping a little.
There's a wedding going on behind Alex in the town hall. The ship on the bells of the tower is a sign of this town's historical identification with the sea. A nobleman from this town (that's his statue below) founded St. Augustine, the oldest European settlement in the U.S., and most of the big houses in the north of Asturias were built by folks who went off to the Americas to make their fortune and returned home to Spain to spread it around. The harbor area is undergoing revitalization centered around a very fancy new civic center (part of it is that white lump below), but the backdrop for the new building is an aging steel mill.
Every part of the city that we saw displays a similar juxtaposition of sprucing up and decrepitude. This is another shot of the town hall square.
At one point we passed a grating in a wall, and peeked into something like a small chapel, but with this weird penitential tableau.
We took a stroll through a very large city park, full of birds like these black swans and blooming trees perfect for a little climbing. Beneath another tree nearby a young girl was being photographed in her first communion dress. I prefer Annabel in her tree-climbing clothes.
The backpack contained a ball that we never actually got around to playing with, but also, secretly smuggled along, a bathing suit and towel. Annabel was determined to go in the ocean no matter how cold it was. We were picked up in downtown Aviles by our friend Carmen (the AHA site director for Oviedo, Alex's equivalent of Rosemary for me in Athens), who drove us around and then to her house in the cute little beach community of Salinas. Here's Carmen along with my girls, after we walked out to view the jetty where her husband (on a day of much rougher seas) was washed off by a wave and almost killed.
Carmen is originally from Cuba, but some of her ancestors moved there from Asturias. Her family moved to the U.S. when she was a girl and she grew up there, but then ended up marrying and settling in Asturias, so that her own family history recapitulates a cycle of Asturian history.
Carmen had prepared a feast for us, which we ate on the terrace of her eighth-floor condo overlooking the ocean and the bluff behind Salinas. A beach walk afterwards was just what we needed to work off a little of the delicious meal. We went first to a small rocky cove to beach-comb, and then to the big municipal beach where Annabel got the chance to make good on her vow to go swimming in the ocean at the first opportunity.
She timed it just right, because the weather turned very quickly, and by the time we got on the bus to Oviedo an hour later, it was cold and windy and threatening. This girl has no fear. Her standard question is, "Is it colder than the Chena?"
Join us again in a week or so, when we should have more ocean-swimming pictures, perhaps including visiting family members Lauren and Leon and Quin. 'Til then, hasta luego.
I'd been wanting to take this particular shot of the cathedral and the bigger mountains to the south for a while, but by the time I got around to it (and got clear weather in the morning to shoot it) most of the snow was gone from the mountains. This is a couple of blocks from our apartment, looking uphill towards the old part of town.
One fun thing about Oviedo, and European cities in general in my limited experience, is that they are relatively compact with a clear boundary where the country begins. Thus we go under the highway and train tracks from what feels like the middle of the city and we're immediately among the farms.
On of my greatest pleasures in living outside Fairbanks this year has been listening to all the different birds singing. Three-quarters of the year in Fairbanks is relatively birdless. I could see myself turning into a serious birder in retirement. But for now I'll try to take an occasional picture and mostly just enjoy the sounds, without worrying about identifying the species.
It was already pretty hazy in Oviedo by 11:00 in the morning, a sign of the heat. We were down the slope before the worst of it, and I am most definitely NOT complaining about the weather, but it was a scorcher.
That round white lump in the middle of the bottom picture is a new, huge, double-ferris-wheel-shaped building that has government offices and a shopping center. Unfortunately, the building's wild shape gets completely lost--so far I've looked at it from every possible angle, and there's no clear view of it except right below it, which of course is not the best angle from which to see its shape. They did not think this through. Our friend Merche works there, and Alex and I sometimes shop there while we're killing time during Annabel's dance class. That's the far end of town from where we live, which in both pictures is a ways off to the left.
We took our long walk on Thursday morning. Friday I went golfing, on the steepest course I've ever played, just gorgeous, the municipal course for Oviedo, a ten-minute bus ride out of town. Saturday we took the bus north to the coast, to Aviles, the third-largest city in Asturias (after Gijon and Oviedo), and spent a couple of hours wandering through the old part, having coffee in this plaza, and shopping a little.
There's a wedding going on behind Alex in the town hall. The ship on the bells of the tower is a sign of this town's historical identification with the sea. A nobleman from this town (that's his statue below) founded St. Augustine, the oldest European settlement in the U.S., and most of the big houses in the north of Asturias were built by folks who went off to the Americas to make their fortune and returned home to Spain to spread it around. The harbor area is undergoing revitalization centered around a very fancy new civic center (part of it is that white lump below), but the backdrop for the new building is an aging steel mill.
Every part of the city that we saw displays a similar juxtaposition of sprucing up and decrepitude. This is another shot of the town hall square.
At one point we passed a grating in a wall, and peeked into something like a small chapel, but with this weird penitential tableau.
We took a stroll through a very large city park, full of birds like these black swans and blooming trees perfect for a little climbing. Beneath another tree nearby a young girl was being photographed in her first communion dress. I prefer Annabel in her tree-climbing clothes.
The backpack contained a ball that we never actually got around to playing with, but also, secretly smuggled along, a bathing suit and towel. Annabel was determined to go in the ocean no matter how cold it was. We were picked up in downtown Aviles by our friend Carmen (the AHA site director for Oviedo, Alex's equivalent of Rosemary for me in Athens), who drove us around and then to her house in the cute little beach community of Salinas. Here's Carmen along with my girls, after we walked out to view the jetty where her husband (on a day of much rougher seas) was washed off by a wave and almost killed.
Carmen is originally from Cuba, but some of her ancestors moved there from Asturias. Her family moved to the U.S. when she was a girl and she grew up there, but then ended up marrying and settling in Asturias, so that her own family history recapitulates a cycle of Asturian history.
Carmen had prepared a feast for us, which we ate on the terrace of her eighth-floor condo overlooking the ocean and the bluff behind Salinas. A beach walk afterwards was just what we needed to work off a little of the delicious meal. We went first to a small rocky cove to beach-comb, and then to the big municipal beach where Annabel got the chance to make good on her vow to go swimming in the ocean at the first opportunity.
She timed it just right, because the weather turned very quickly, and by the time we got on the bus to Oviedo an hour later, it was cold and windy and threatening. This girl has no fear. Her standard question is, "Is it colder than the Chena?"
Join us again in a week or so, when we should have more ocean-swimming pictures, perhaps including visiting family members Lauren and Leon and Quin. 'Til then, hasta luego.
1 comment:
show us some food pictures! We've loved following the blog. -Jen and Ryan
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