Covadonga

The next stop for us was Covadonga, a town with a registered population of 58 right into the mountain area called Picos de Europa. The town is home to the famous Covadonga Virgin, which according to historical record help Visigoths to push back Arabs from the area in 722 under the leadership of Pelayo, who prayed to the image of the Virgin held within the cave system. The battle arguably initiated the creation of the modern Spanish state as it was the first battle where Christians were able to defeat Arabs.

The town itself is beautiful, built right on the mountain with trails that follow a river that seeps through the rock and comes all the way down. The vegetation is made of forests, ferns, and moss and is very relaxing. Below the Virgin Sanctuary, there is a famous 7- armed fountain that, according to legend, will help whoever drinks water from its seven arms to find love within a year. With Karina and Napo set and Nadia not willing to take the water, we didn't get to try it out.

The town is mostly made of hotels, restaurants, and rural houses that are built around the Covadonga Basílica. Walking its streets at night is magical, and it has a different experience from visiting the town during the day.

From a culinary perspective, we found here two traditional foods from Asturias: fabada and cachopo. Fabada is a dish made with broad beans cooked with a bit of chorizo, morcilla, and a piece of pig skin. It is absolutely delicious and fulfilling. Cachopo, on the other hand, is a dish made from veal filets, where two of them are put together and filled with goat cheese and ham, and finally breaded and fried. The cachopo is not for the faint of the heart as a single order weighs almost 1.5 kilograms and can be shared with up to 6 people. This was the only time in Spain that we simply couldn't finish our food although we wanted to.

Covadonga was also the first time where we had to get two different rooms, as the rural house where we stayed had only rooms for 2 people each. Since Nadia wanted to stay with Oliver, we allowed them to stay on the room upstairs, and we had to say they knew how to behave. We had one of the best nights of sleep in the town and took breakfast the next day from Bea, the house owner. From there, she let us know that unless we had property on the area of the lakes, we wouldn't be allowed to travel by car there, and our options were a cab service or a bus. Since the cab traveled further into the area and would drop us very close to the upper lake, we decided to take the cab service and spend the morning at Covadonga Lakes.Read more