Covadonga: Chocolate Azul

As I mentioned yesterday, we took a day trip to Covadonga today!  It is this beautiful little town with a church and this really interesting chapel that is literally inside a cave.  It is hard to describe  it, but I will try and show you.  There were strict rules about not taking photos, and I am a respectful tourist.

This is our typical mode of transportation on these trips.  The ALSA bus system runs all throughout Spain and is amazingly efficient.

Beautiful church in a beautiful setting.

If you are wondering to yourself, is this part of this amazing church?  Nope!  It's the bathroom!!!!

So this is the cave, if you can see, in the very background.  It is actually an entire chapel, with a pulpit and seating etc.  It is just gorgeous.  

Church again.  Love the colors!

Lindsey, Me, and the Church

Inside the Cave.  You can see the church from here as well.  

Entrance to the chapel inside the cave.

Chapel in the cave.

Me in front of a waterfall underneath the cave.

This little guy followed us from the church down to the waterfall and waited patiently by our side (until Simone eventually fed him and then he NEVER left us ever, surprise, surprise).  We needed a name for him, so I voted for "El Amigo."

Part of our fearless group: Simone (Italian), Hiroto (Japanese), and Lindsey (American).  As always, there will be more group photos to come.  

After we hit up all of the tourist spots, we unfortunately still had four hours until the next bus to Oviedo.  So we tried hiking up a hill but it led to nowhere, and eventually we ended up at the top of this hill, sitting at a little bar over-looking all of the city.  Originally, I was very disappointed that we had so much down-time, but eventually I realized that we were in a peaceful, beautiful town, the conversation was good, and the weather was perfect.   

The great part about travelling with the boys from Japan and one from Italy is that we were forced to speak Spanish.  It was a terrific experience, and as the day got on I found it easier and easier to be myself while speaking Spanish.  

We ended up playing children's games from our respective countries.  It was actually really fun.  I introduced hangman, the Japanese had a couple fun ones, as did Simone.  I snapped this picture because I couldn't believe that I was playing MASH (a game to predict your future, which I played on the playground all the time when I was little) in Spain with foreign students.  

Eventually we got on the correct bus and slept our way back to Oviedo.  It was such an enjoyable night and Lindsey and I had so much fun speaking only in Spanish that starting on Monday, the two of us will try very hard to speak no more English.  Obviously some will slip out, but we can try!

And on that note, I want to make one tiny comment.  It is very hard to be here with so many people not making an effort to speak Spanish.  I understand speaking English when you are in a large group of Americans; it just comes naturally.  But when you are at a large gathering and there are a couple of foreign students who speak no English, it would be the polite, and academic, thing to do to make an effort to speak to them in a language they can understand, and that you are here to learn.  

Ah well, enough ranting.   Hope you all are having a great weekend!