Oviedo to Segovia

Oviedo hike * Lunch with member family * Segovia

13,522 steps

We spent most of our day in Oviedo with Stewart as our guide. It was wonderful hearing his mission stories and him pointing out all his memorable places.  We climbed to the top of a nearby "mountain" with a statue of Christ on top for a grand over-look of this city.  Kind of like the Ensign Peak of Oviedo.  Stewart pointed out the interesting points of the city from this bird's eye view.  Oviedo sits in a valley surrounded by green mountains.  This area of Spain is gorgeous. It's green with jagged mountains, rocky on top with green everywhere else.  It's cool with a sea breeze - Oviedo is only 30 minute from the coast.

At 1:30 we had a lunch appointment with a member family that Stewart befriended while in this area.  A complete member family with 2 daughters, one of whom is a return missionary from Chile.  You could feel the spirit of the Gospel in their home with the picture of the Savior on the wall.  We had a marvelous lunch of green salad with tuna, bread, jam, tortilla (eggs & potatoes), and a thin fillet of chicken seasoned, breaded, and sautéed in butter.  Every bite was wonderful.  We had brought a watermelon and soda to the lunch, so those were added as well.  We enjoyed playing Uno with their family afterwards.  It's a bit weird that an entire family of 3 working adults can be home in the middle of the day for a 2 hour lunch on a Thursday.

We left Oviedo late and had a hard time finding our apartment in Segovia because of the closed roads in the middle of town (very common).  As we looked for our apartment I felt like I was back in Italy as Eric squeezed the car through tiny streets, bringing the side view mirrors in tight so they wouldn't hit the side of the buildings as we drove down the "street".  This was Stewart's first introduction to this kind of old style Spanish town. Even though he's been in Spain for 2 years, the areas he's served in have been suburbs with apartments, not old town city centers where the tourists hang out.

We arrived so late all the grocery stores were closed so we had to have dinner at the nearby cafe.  The kids are exhausted, we've had so many late nights recently and we've been traveling a lot.  I knew when we planned our trip this week (and the week we traveled from Italy to France) would be hard because of staying only a couple of nights in each city.  It'll be good to land in Madrid for 5 days on Saturday.  If the heat doesn't kill us there we should be able to recuperate and regroup.

Looking out towards Oviedo from hike

Lunch with member family

Segovia

Gijon and Oviedo - Visiting Stewart's mission areas

Gijon * Oviedo * YSA activity

Despite staying up late we did our best to get an early start so we could make our 1:30 lunch appointment with Stewart's most recent companion.  He had planned to meet them at the church in Gijon for a church picnic.  Gijon is about 3 1/2 hours from San Sebastián.

We enjoyed meeting Elder Lords (Stewart's companion for the last month of his mission) and Elder Lords' new companion of less than 24 hours.  We learned that Elder Lords was from Idaho where his Stake President was my cousin's Husband (Grant Francis) and was good friends with Stewart's 2nd cousin (Cameron Francis).  Small world in the church.  Stewart and Elder Lords recently enjoyed teaching and baptizing an 80 year old Spanish man they meet on the street while he was out riding his bike.  After the 2 hour lunch break - the Elders were off to work and we were off to Oviedo, an area where Stewart served for 6 months nearly a year ago.

We stayed in a hotel in Oviedo since we were only there 1 night.  Stewart gave us a walking tour of the older district of Oviedo and we found a great place for a tapas dinner.  We love the tapas concept.  Small, yummy, inexpensive appetizers that if eaten in groups makes a light dinner.  Stewart introduced us to a baked bean dish called, favada.  We also sampled our first churros con chocolate; we're going to need to have that again!

We arrived at the Oviedo chapel just in time for the YSA activity.  The bishop was there and about 10 YSA. (The bishop met his wife at a YSA activity and you could tell he was doing everything in his power to get these kids married to each other - the problem is -  the small dating pool).

Maren jumped in to play the piano for the opening devotional and then we played games until 10:00 - EFY games like "big bootie" except they called it Pedro, Pablo - which incidentally at the end of the game Maren was the winner, despite speaking no Spanish.  We also played "symbols" and the "states" games (though we used countries, in Spanish - which was a bit harder for the non-spanish speakers).

The activity went on until 10:30 p.m.  The spaniards are night owls, but it's taking a toll on us, we are tired.

I can't believe we fit in this car

Lunch in Gijon

Oviedo walk

Oviedo dinner

YSA activity, Oviedo ward