Lucky Luarca, Austrias?

Lucky Luarca, Austrias?
October 7, 2008

It is a good thing Luarca, Spain was
gorgeous, because getting there was
a nightmare! Perhaps we stayed a

It is a good thing Luarca, Spain was  gorgeous, because getting there was a nightmare! Perhaps we stayed a tad too long enjoying our splurge seafood lunch in Cedeira, because it was dark by the time we reached Luarca. We had driven westward out of Galicia into lush Austrias which is visited even less than Galicia and is a very verdant part of "Green Spain".

As the sun started to go down, I suggested to DaVinci, that perhaps we should just stop at a campsite that I noticed on the road, but he felt we could make it as we were so close. Once it gets dark though, things get so much harder and some how you don’t really realize that until it is too late. We have old eyes that just do not see that well in the dark anymore, so we always regret it when we find ourselves once again in this predicament. Some times we luck out doing a little bit in the dark if all goes smoothly, but this was not one of those times.

Luarca is a beautiful ancient town, but simply a horror to be lost in at night. It spans a river, there are precarious cliffs, it is in the middle of no where and it  has seven bridges-enough said, eh? We called the campsite several times, but continued to go on frightening detours to nowhere , down tiny streets, over scary bridges, though tunnels and down the spookiest one lane country road than one can imagine.

Finally, DaVinci felt brain dead from all the driving and stress. Purely by accident, he stopped right by a phone booth, so this time I called and got directions once more from the campsite, even though it was nearing midnight by this time.

Finally we made it and what a delightful place it was, we discovered in the morning. The campsite reminded me a bit of our beloved Big Sur and was a charmingly rickety kind of  place which reminded me of one we once stayed at in Big Sur called Deetjens. Luarca also looked so much better in the daylight and a quite interesting town, but we did not have much time or inclination to do a tour after our ordeal the night before.

We would have liked to lingered more in Asturias, but the distance we needed to cover this year was very ambitious. We needed to get to Sweden by a certain date, so had to press on. Asturias, like Galicia has a Celtic past, so there are similarities. We enjoyed the roofs there that were made with slate in a unique way.

Perhaps we will go back and explore next year!