Ciao, Northern Spain

We started our last morning in the remote reaches of northern Spain with a run on the beach.

This was obviously post-run.

The part of Spain we're in, Asturias, is famous for two things in the culinary category - (1) sidra, hard cider made from the apples that grow all around here, and (2) bean stew, flavored with bacon, blood sausage, whatever disgusting animal-related food you can imagine, etc. But anyway, the beans, which, between you and me are pretty much just fava beans, have a government-protected provenance and are sold in stores here as official Asturias stewing beans. Whatever.

After telling Asturias in perfect Spanish what we thought about their beans. . .

. . . we headed east, making a quick stop at Llanes, which has its own charms, which do not include the creepy happy mannequins modeling the latest fashion.


















 Once we got to Bilbao, we enjoyed the much more civilized culture, food and public transport.















However, the language remains a puzzle. This image, from a bus stop, shows Spanish on the left and some Bilbao language on the right. What does it mean? It's just not normal to put k's and z's next to each other in words.They have x's too.














Finally, Martha and I were kind of excited to possibly go out north of Bilbao to see the deserted beach  and unique rock formations that we’d seen in Game of Throne episodes. But then we read that it’s impossible to park there and we saw this flyer at our hotel. Why, as a species, do we just continue to destroy the things we love? No thanks.