Rock me Ribadeo

Once you have an item on your Bucket List that is strikingly close to being checked off the hours cannot go fast enough. On the lovely Website Pinterest (aka Hoarding for Hipsters) I found a picture of the Arches Cathedral Beach in Galicia, Spain. Not seeing any other pictures of the coastline or having not a clue of where it was located in Spain, I knew this was where I needed to be. 

We're not sure where that picture was taken from, but this was a close second....The Cathedrals beach was a cooler, foggy morning, with low tide being at 10:30 am. If you remember that most of theses caverns and niches are impenetrable during the high tide, it does become all the more special.

But let me backtrack...we left Vit. Saturday morning with the idea that we would drive to Ribadeo, to stay at one of the closer towns next to the Cathedrals. Cathedrals was about 8km away from Ribadeo. So we drove 5...yes 5 hours....to Ribadeo, arriving at our destination at about 4pm. It was a long day, but I could cry tears of gladness at how flippin' awesome my children did on the drive there. It was a true miracle. Keeping in mind that our normal modus operandi is a roomy Chevy Suburban with leather interior and a DVD player, with MP3s, CamWow and Nintendo DS, the children have adapted well to a less 'connected' existence. Yes, they still play Temple Run on Rachel's phone (I have lost my phone adaptor somewhere along our travels) but overall do not seem to missing the technology all that much.

We found our hotel, the lovely
Casona De Lasurtegua

(http://hotelcasona.com/)

and were thankful to get into our rooms and unwind. Rooms-yes---rooms plural. Spain has never accommodated the five of us in one hotel room. Not even in the highest-price hotels, there is never room for more than 4 persons. They actually get a little put-out when you request one. Proof yet again that the European way of life is dying out. The European community is just not reproducing. Sad but true...there was even a story on their local news station on a fair that celebrated families of large size...families with 4 or more children. Imagine!

So yes, we do have separate rooms when we travel. Which frankly, after living in a 700sf apartment with one bathroom all week, is a God-send.
While the kids rested and recouped from their drive in their room (heavily armed with grenades, knives, lighters and guns for anyone who reads this as unaccompanied minors)  ;)  Beloved and I took the camera and toured around town. Seeing as it was siesta the streets were quiet, but an added unexpected element was that the main cobblestone streets were cordoned off with construction tape. After a few minutes of walking around we figured out why.

Bike race. 

Esta primero bicicleta

Secundo bicicleta :) 

never been this close to a race before...and to hear it on cobblestoned streets no less who pretty sweet. The tires  make a 'skeeeeeee' sound as they travel past. I've always thought the racers looked like they were on tiny mechanical spiders, the bikes are SO small (although the tires on the one above look a bit nobby for a road bike-anyways)
Not knowing much about the sport, I couldn't tell if this was professional or a amateur race, just that it took up the entire town of Ribadeo for the day and was pretty darn well professionally managed. Well done!

While we did not feel like negotiating around the bikes, particularly after hearing an ambulance siren and watching rescue crews racing past, we decided to walk out of town a bit and try to find some of the local flavor.

go straight at the orange hotel 

go right at the large metal people 

shopfront

wrought iron stained glass sandstone red glittering roof tile

flagstone barn red wooden windowframe

sleepy little fishing village remnants

Back to the hotel to pick up the children and go drive out to the lighthouse we'd seen driving into town. It was worth every moment. My favorite group of artists are early 20th c. California artists who have an affinity for capturing the depth and allure of the deep blue ocean. Called the California plein air movement, this was an American interpretation of the French Impressionist movement, where artists moved their easels outside to capture the light.

 As Billy Graham said "Can you see the wind? You can see the affects of the wind, but have you ever seen the wind?" You can see the effects of the wind. And the waves and the earth's gravitational pull and the blue sky reflecting on clean clear Altantic ocean. I do love the Costa Verde. 

breathtaking 

Made me a little friend when I asked  a fisherman fishing off the lighthouse to show me how many fish he'd caught that day. He had at least a dozen fat shiny ocean fish in the grocery sack. 

Tank and Bumpo

Why that's quite possibly the largest fishing pole I have ever seen

big fat ugly worm

turquoise and green and blue and teal

After our trip to the lighthouse, where not sure if you could tell or not, it was QUITE windy and cold! We drove back into Ribadeo and ate dinner. It was a so-so meal. The thing we have figured out that is in Spain, when you order something on the menu, the items it has listed on the menu are it. There is no mayonesa, lechuga, tamates, or other accoutrements when you order a boccadillo con salame. What you get? You get a large baguette sliced in half with two slices of salami in the middle. Regardless of where we have eaten, this is pretty standard for Spanish eating establishments. After eating a pottery bowl of  langostines con garlic y cebolla (yep, a bowl of shrimp in garlic oil and onions) I have been craving a big huge old bowl of salad. So that is on the menu for dinner tonight. Maybe with a pechuga con plank.  We have to say...the food here has been a bit  underwhelming. My most favorite meal as of yet as been in San Sebastian, the selection of tapas that we had at a bar there. Otherwise it is a lot of ham, pork, tuna and potatoes. I've given up on my fear of eating greens here and am craving a large hunk of iceberg lettuce with blue cheese dressing.
Seeing as the trip to the Cathedral beach warrants its own collection of photographs, I'm going to end this post here and write another one later today. The kids are working great this morning on their homeschool, and I have enjoyed sitting in my bedroom with the windows wide open and the light pouring in. There is definitely a coolness in the air here now. Fall is starting to settle in and over the weeks I am watching the acid-green leaves of tree outside my room grow limp and start to change into yellowing. When the leaves fall I will mourn that shot of color outside my window. :)