Cap'n's bLog

 The Camino Primativo is a much less traveled path but what it lacks in perigrinos it makes up for with scenery. With fewer pilgrims and options for lodging, our family is developing quickly. We have stayed in 3 wonderful places, 2 of them donativos (donation only). The donativos include family style dinner and breakfast. Our traveling band includes: Thomas from Switzerland, who is a watchmaker and grew up on a dairy farm. If his grandfather was a chocolatier, the stereotype would be complete. He has stayed all 3 nights with us despite being much faster than us. Much faster when he is walking but a significant amount of his day is consumed drinking coffee so we often finish ahead of him.  Laura who is from Florida but now lives in Malaga. She is there for a few years with her Italian boyfriend. They met in Orlando when he was in flight school. Now he has taken a job in Malaga and she was fed up with the practice of law, so she’s taking a sabbatical in Spain and exploring. She is hilari

 Tomorrow we start the Camino Primativo, 15 days of walking roughly 300 kilometers across the northwest corner of Spain, much of it through the lush mountains of Asturias.  We arrived early this morning, well before the sun in Madrid. After killing a few hours at Chamartin train station we spent another 3 on a train to Oviedo, head bobbing in and out of sleep. Our agenda in Oviedo was simple, find the Air B&B, grab a bite to eat and pick up our credentials.  Amy suggested Alterna Sidreria, which was close to our lodging and very popular with the locals. The clock was ticking on the late afternoon kitchen closing of 4:30pm and we didn’t think we had it in us to wait until the reopening at 8pm. We got seated in the family area downstairs. I tried to look around for clues on what to order. One clue was obvious, everyone was drinking cidre and we would too. Attempting to sort through the cellar cidres on the menu was a mistake according to Pablo our server. Those would be too funky for