A HOLIDAY TO REMEMBER

Hi everone! Today I´m going to tell you about my best holidays.

In summer of 2014 I went with my family to Pontevedra, as every year, to spend a few days on the beach. At first everything was going well, but the weather started being worse. The second day the weather was terrible and we had to come to a decisión: going back to Ourense, because we couldn´t stay there, or moving to another place.

As you can imagine we chose the second option. So that day we went to Lugo. It was a quite long travel from Pontevedra, but at the same time it was exciting. First, we visitted Souto da Retorta, in Chavín (Viveiro). It´s a small but magnificent forest (also a protected natural area) full of huge and incredible  eucalyptuses. Here we saw O Avó (the grandfather), than being more that 130 years old and with a height of 68 metres, is considered the biggest tree in Spain. If you want to see some pictures you can take a look at this web. Moreover, in Lugo we went also to the Praia de Augas Santas (Beach of the Cathedrals) and to an abandoned fish farm in Ribadeo:

The fish farm (on the inside)

As Catedrais (Ribadeo)

The fish farm (on the outside)

I took a photo of an informative panel because the image was cute

The school was a ground floor house

Before telling you about the days I stayed in Asturias I want to talk about another place we visitted in Lugo too, between Viveiro and Ribadeo. My grandmother (my father´s mother) worked as a teacher for many years and my grandfather worked as a merchant, so they moved several times during his life, looking for the best for their six children. For this reason my father lived in different sites in Galicia. One of them is a remote village, hidden among the mountains, called As Oiras. Here I show you a picture of its school (nowadays they don´t use it), where my father studied when he was a very young child.

About Asturias I could tell you many things, but I will try to summarize. When you are between Galicia and Asturias this is what you see:

Do you imagine practising mindfulness here?

But also:

Cows... a lot of cows

And nice horses!

The first we saw when we left Lugo was the Navia area. The views here are amazing and I recomend you to see it! Later we visited two different villages.

Oneta is a small and very green village with incredible views and a nice waterfall:

My father had a shower here

Here there were many cows too

And Luarca, a village where the mountains and the sea melt away:

Luarca

Moreover we stayed in different towns and cities in Asturias. 

In Oviedo we ate in a kind of shopping centre called Palacio de Exposiciones y Congresos (I know it doesn´t sound like a shopping centre, but believe me, it was) where there weren´t many people, but the structure of the building is superb. Click in the numbers to see diferent views of this place: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 

In Avilés we went to the beach, but it started raining and we had to left. In Asturias it rains a lot!!!

The thing I liked most in Gijón was the University:

And the most beautiful things of our holidays were the Picos de Europa and the Bufones de Pría. When we decided to see the Picos the Europa we couldn´t see the mountains because it was getting dark and the weather was quite foggy, but I can show you a picture of the Santa Cueva de Covadonga, which is a small church built directly in the mountain´s rock:

Those small people are my parents and my sister

I couldn´t  find any video in English about the Bufones de Pría, but you can see this one in Spanish which explains very well what this place is.

In Cantabria we could stay only for a few hours. We went to El Sardinero, the most popular beach in Santander, but I haven´t got any pictures, so if you´re interested in this amazing city you can check this web.

Finally, we spent the last days in Castilla y León. First, we arrived in Astorga, a village where there´s a bullfighting arena, something  that surprised me a lot, but not for good because I can´t stand cruelty to animals. Even then, I liked this village and I remember my father looking curious to some old and abandoned buildings which were on sale. Next day we went to León. We took a walk in the town and we saw the Cathedral. Our trip finished in Las Médulas (Orellán), a gold-mining site near Ponferrada where the views are amazing! Then, we went back to Ourense with great memories of the places we had seen.

It´s me!

Las Médulas

I hope you enjoyed reading my experience!