bay of biscay and galicia ::: part IV

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the last leg of our northern spain trip seemed pretty quick, nonetheless, it was not short of sights i´d like to spend more time at.  galicia is extremely famous in spain for several reasons, one being its amazing and rugged coastline and its top class seafood which is not expensive at all.  however, as we were on a sort of tight schedule, we could not dedicate the time needed to ride all  the way along the coast down to vigo.  instead we took the shortcut riding inland.

2010 is "año santo xacobeo", which happens every year on the 25th of july (patron saint of james, son of zebedee) falls on a sunday.  for this reason it is a very popular and significant time to walk the st. james´way, the pilgrimage to the cathedral in santiago de compostela.  it was quite a common thing to see these pilgrims walking by the road towards santiago, some in search of pardon, others to achieve the goal as a personal challenge with no spiritual significance.

not a bad plto have lunch, somewhere on the way...

another significant place was padron, where the famous capsicums and the saying "coma os pementos de padrón: uns pican e outros non" come from.  these have to be one of my favourite finger foods ever!!!  watch out for the eventual spicy one if you are not used to spicy food.  the surprise factor has turned this delicacy into a fun and social culinary experience :)

once we hit pontevedra we had the ocean back in sight... this time the atlantic.  the "rias baixas" offers a very particular way to see the sea, similar, in a way, to that of the scandinavian fjords at a much, much smaller scale, but indeed beautiful as few places i can think of on earth (this is me being biassed i guess).  the way the sea hits the land in this region is what makes the conditions ideal for a great variety of sea food to be found here.  this trip is not for someone on a diet or people with anisakis.

the 4 heroes

as we felt the end of our trip was getting closer exhaustion was getting to us, and watching some of the greatest sunsets i´ve seen, over an ice cold beer, made the arrival in vigo just perfect.  now all we had to worry about was the absolutely fantastic bollywood themed party i really hope starts happening every single year!

playa de américa, nigran

nigran and baiona are full of places to have a nice quiet drink by the sea, i´d like to recommend playa de américa or patos.

sunset over nigran

make sure you put this destination in your bucket list and you wont regret it.

bay of biscay and galicia ::: part III

asturias & galicia


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thursday was a day full of stories. we were already almost hitting our final destination and the end seemed closer than i wanted, but we were about to continue having all sorts of things happenning to us on the way.

shortly after leaving cangas de onis, we stopped for fuel and as we were riding out of the petrol station, charly broke his front brake lever... thank god it was not sunday, although finding a business which is open during lunch hours in spain can be a difficult task. all we had to do was wait till 4 or 4:30 and find a workshop or a suzuki dealer that would have a spare lever. fortunately we were fairly close to oviedo and the road was not as curvey as the ones we had just passed the previous days. at least till oviedo.

old "águila negra" brewery

so we found a suzuki dealer which happened to be right next to a typical asturian cider house where we had lunch while we waited for the shops to open. again, we found great typical food for a ridiculously cheap price. if you happen to be in oviedo, visit "sidrería tierra astur".

after lunch we were in desperate need of a "siesta", but we also needed to make it to galicia before sunset if we wanted to be in shape for the party in vigo on saturday, so we continued getting slowly back to the coast. the road to get to the coast from oviedo is perfect for motorcycles. great scenery and plenty of good places to stop and have a bite if you need to. however, we had a little episode with a dude who thought tailgating was fun. we saw a "guardia civil" patrol car and had the chance to report him. hopefully he will think twice before repeating his feat with other riders.

the last part of this leg was a walk in the park, and the atlantic weather made itself a little more obvious as we aproached ribadeo, a little cloudy and more chilly than what we had so far.

a sight worth mentioning, just before hitting ribadeo... there is a helipad and a storage area for windmill sweeps. this region of spain has plenty of windmills on the top of the mountains used to generate electricity. the sweeps are huge, so they are transported to the storage facility by truck and then lifted by helicopter to the top of the mountains where they are assembled. how i wish i would have stopped to take a picture.

initialy we wanted to stay overnight in ribadeo, but finding a nice place facing the sea was hard, and we were told by the locals to go to foz instead.

we followed instructions and ended up finding a great apartment for the 4 of us for 120€. 2 rooms, kitchen, living room with a huge t.v. and a balcony facing the sea. couldnt be more perfect.

foz

foz happened to be a great place to go out at night too. plenty of young people and super cheap drinks. we ended up at a bar called zooropa, which had a bingo night, so for every drink (4€ /drink is super cheap in spain) they would give us a card to play bingo. our friend "ñas" decided to fuck with us a little and crossed the last remaining number of one of our cards without us noticing and we called bingo. funny moment of the trip. the whole bar was carefully listening to all the numbers being checked, but when number 35 was checked... all started laughing. we were shocked to see ñas laughing too and gave him the "youuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!" kind of look... hahaha fair enough, we had a laugh ourselves i guess.