The Enchantment Of A Green City In Green Spain

Exploring the magical city of Oviedo, the jewel of northern Spain.

By Beebe Bahrami

Jetlagged but lastly at our destination, Miles and I checked in at the Hotel Favila, dropped off our backpacks, splashed our groggy faces with cold water, and joined the swelling crowd for the evening stroll along Calle Uria. The essential mass carried us past the magical forest of Campo de San Francisco Park. Guys and women have been paseando through the park, dressed in the year’s colors of brown and violet, fuchsia and black, and wrapped in Kashmir shawls and suede jackets. We went on towards the medieval neighborhood with its towering Gothic cathedral and golden arched passageways.

We were in Oviedo, the capital of Spain’s northwestern province, Asturias. Oviedo has develop into a little something of an yearly pilgrimage for us before we venture into the enchanting coastal wilds of the province. Oviedo is enchanting in its personal ideal. This green city casts a spell by means of her intimate avenues of sandstone, marble and carved wood, her jovial residents who assistance the visitor with out a moment’s hesitation, her golden cider bars, her Celtic and pre-Romanesque motifs, and her fresh, locally grown/caught/hunted food. A university town, Oviedo is surrounded by rolling green hills and mountains while the Atlantic Ocean is only a forty-minute drive away.

Founded in A.D. 757, then destroyed by invading Arabs and Berbers, Oviedo’s more permanent beginnings date to the early 800s when King Alfonso II moved his court from the nearby mountain town, Cangas de Onis, and rebuilt the sacked city. It was about this time period that the warm golden and exclusive pre-Romanesque architecture flourished with its carved swirling stone and colorful facades of superb creatures and stories.

Some years back, Woody Allen arrived in Oviedo to accept a prestigious filmmaking award from the Principe de Asturias. When asked how he liked the city, he replied, “Oviedo is a city of fairytales.” Allen’s a single-liner created Oviedans so delighted that there is now a statue of him in the center of town with a plaque engraved with his magical phrases.

The following morning we set out on foot for the north end of town to examine the 9th century pre-Romanesque buildings on the nearby outskirts of Oviedo. Within 10 minutes we had been heading up a steep hill. In “Handbook for Travelers in Spain” the 19th century English travel writer Richard Ford described this stroll as becoming forested and wild. Right now, a neighborhood of walled-off luxury properties mark the first half of the ascent. Just after that, it’s almost as if you have transported back to Ford’s time: forest mingled with green pastures, farms, grazing cows, and horses all stretching upward toward two amber yellow stone buildings over 1,a hundred many years outdated.

Developed underneath king Ramiro I (A.D. 842-850), each buildings were constructed from a stone that appears to have absorbed the rays of the sun and illuminates from within. The very first structure we reached was the church of Santa Maria del Naranco, a tall, narrow, airy, and properly symmetrical edifice with pillars and walls engraved with animals and symbols of kingship. An uncommon form for a church, it was originally built as the royal summer residence.

A very little increased up the hill was the 2nd pre-Romanesque developing, the Capilla de San Miguel de Lillo. It was in much more disrepair but teams of professionals had not too long ago found the chapel’s unique walls and had outlined them on the ground. The standing stays unveiled walls that had once been painted with rich, saturated colours in shapes depicting holy figures, animals, and plants. Pillars supporting the hefty vaulted ceiling encased twining motifs creating the worshiper come to feel as if he have been in a forest.

Hungry, we hiked back down into the city, pausing briefly to take pleasure in a frothy cold beer at a road side café. Miles, whose enthusiasm for Spain grows ever deeper as he discovers how substantially Spaniards enjoy gathering and eating, grew to become animated with the imagined of lunch. He enthusiastically suggested we hunt down a menu del dia.

Menus del dia, everyday, prix fixe menus, are 3-program lunch and dinner menus posted outdoors bars and restaurants all across Spain. We manufactured a beeline for the medieval city’s stone walkways in which only pedestrians could enter and the place these menus abounded. We landed ourselves in a location identified as Cafeteria Manhattan. As east coasters the irony hit us, and we committed to their ten euro lunch and warm welcome. The feast included fried calamari, grilled chicken, french fries, a salad of greens, olives and tuna, a modest loaf of complete wheat bread, red wine, and completed with a dessert of Asturian cheesecake (less sweet than its American cousin and wealthy with pretty fresh creamy cheese from a nearby, grass-fed cow).

As we were tucking into our grilled chicken, I asked our waiter about the license plates. He lit up. “As you can see, the owner has a factor for Manhattan.” He paused, hoping our faces would register the marvel of this. They did. “The license plates come from his many years of living and doing work in New York. He, like so several Asturians, had to leave to locate get the job done there’s just not adequate operate here. I lived in Hamburg for twenty many years. Two years ago I returned and the owner gave me this career.” Stories of immigration are as substantially a part of Asturias and Oviedo as are the green hills, the excellent foods, and the cows on the edge of town.

Each Tuesday morning the weekly market place sets up in the center of Oviedo, up coming door to the historic heart’s each day covered marketplace, El Fontan. Gypsies, West and North Africans, Ecuadorians, and Asturians alike mingled as artisans, farmers, ranchers, and merchants hawking their wares. The surrounding community had winding stone residential streets where residences have been painted cobalt blue, spring meadow green, rust red, mustard yellow, and periwinkle.

Miles and I then stepped into El Fontan where we came upon an enormous assortment of just-picked create, fresh-caught fish, cured sausages, Spanish spices (specially saffron and smoked paprika) and hills of green, black, and red olives. The fishmongers efficiently wielded their pirate-like thick knives to behead, descale, and filet each fish to purchase. A close by outdoor café refueled marketplace goers with cider, wine, Asturian cheeses, Spanish omelets (tortillas), and olives.

Though a city, Oviedo is intimately connected to its countryside. It would have been challenging to leave if we did not have a few weeks in a rugged coastal village. As our train pulled out of the station, we noticed the third and final pre-Romanesque building in Oviedo, the church of San Julian de los Prados. Created by Alfonso II, it is the oldest pre-Romanesque construction nevertheless standing in all of Spain. I knew I’d be back to examine it out and to return to the Tuesday market.

Beebe Bahrami is a author and cultural anthropologist specializing in travel, adventure, foods and wine, and cross-cultural creating. Her guide, The Spiritual Traveler Spain—The Guide to Sacred Web pages and Pilgrim Routes, is due out in the spring of 2009 with HiddenSpring Books/Paulist Press. Her writing also seems in Michelin Green Guides-Provence, TransitionsAbroad.com, SouthSilkRoad.com, Nationwide Geographic books, The Pennsylvania Gazette, and in Bark, Wag, Expedition, and Archaeology magazines, amid other individuals. To read through more of her travel writing or to understand about The Spiritual Traveler Spain, please visit her web-site at www.beebesfeast.com.