Gijon and Oviedo, Asturias

Hola. Welcome to Gijon, northern coastal city of the Spanish autonomous community Asturias. It's about a six-hour train ride from Logrono, and worth the trip for the long, beautiful uncrowded beaches. The weather was fairly calm when we were there, although it rained a little bit one afternoon and was cloudy for a two days out of our three-day stay.

We camped out on the beach, walked around the long boardwalks bordering the sea, and wandered around the old parts of the city searching for good cheap restaurants, nice things to take pictures of, and basically to get a feel for the place. It was a little past the major tourist season, and so the hot summer weather didn't pack the city with too many surfers, sunbathers, or spectators; it was a good time to visit, really.

The sea is the Bay of Biscay, although in Spanish it is called the Cantabrian Sea.


Here's an old church that was located near the beach. There was a mix of old and new buildings in Gijon, which is a historic port city and also popular tourist destination, which allows a lot of commericial investment there as well.

Gijon is the largest city in Asturias, though Oviedo is its capital. We went on train thirty minutes south of Gijon to visit Oviedo for the afternoon. It was a lovely city with many large streets, a tall gothic style cathedral, lots of shops and parks, and also some interesting architecture. *Sidenote: Woody Allen came to Oviedo for some reason or another, liked it, wrote about it or spoke about it, and the people of Oviedo made of statue of him. Oh! He included Oviedo in his newest movie about Spain: Vicki Christina Barcelona.

A statue in Oviedo with the cathedral some blocks in the distance.

Here is some of the old style architecture that I saw in Oviedo and that I've seen in other areas of Spain as well. I especially liked the color combinations of these apartments.

Back to Gijon now, here I am standing on the boardwalk looking over the sea and the coast.

Asturias is known for its sidra (hard apple cider) among other things. You can see the traditional way to pour the sidra here in this photo. Our waiter is demonstrating us how it's done. He reaches as far as he can with the bottle and with the glass and pours a five or so ounces into a glass without spilling any. It's fun to do.

Gijon is on the sea, and the sea provides food. I ate the food. This was my favorite at a seafood restaurant we went to. It's a shrimp cocktail--the best I've ever had--made with crab and fish and rice and some good sauce.



Fishing is important there, and we could see many big fishing boats and cruising along the vast harbors of the coastline. There were also a lot of sailboats and other recreational boats at the ports. We didn't see many of the rec boats out on the water, so maybe it was a little late in the year.

Here's a fun little photo opp we took advantage of at the docks: the front tip of a ship welded onto the side of the pier.