Segovia is so yesterday!

It was only yesterday that we left Segovia...a beautiful old city..but it seems so far away! we set the GPS for Leon Salamanca via Avila and set out. Avila is the one city with a complete wall around it. This is because it was built at the end of the wall building era and I guess nobody tried to invade. Now it is a great tourist attraction' and worth seeing. Then on to Salamanca which has the largest square in Spain. It was full of people and we decided it would be a great place to eat lunch. Lunch becomes quite important here as we usually have just a croissant and coffee for breakfast and if we are lucky fresh orange juice. Not too much of the healthy stuff!
So we plunked down at a table and asked for menu..the camararo looked at us and then reluctantly went and got one. It was about noon...we should have noticed that nobody else was doing anything but drinking coffee or wine. What arrived for our meal was a bun with either a few slices of ham or a bundle of friend calamari...the whole wheat craze does not extend to spain. Not a bit of spice or veggie...nada.
Now we know...lunch doesn't start until at least 1:30 and people always have aperatives before lunch and dinner.. As we left we passed much more interesting outdoor cafes that were getting set up. Another cultural lesson learned!
We changed all our plans and headed for Valladolid as I had read there was a sculpture museum there. This is a non-tourist town and the hotel we found was not all that friendly. The sculpture museum was interesting, but only had sacred stuff from churches..though it amazed me to see that some of the 16th century folks were doing amazing lifelike animated forms. Being a university town the before dinner stroll when everyone gets out in their best dress and meets in the square, went on all night outside the hotel. Those young folks never go to bed on a Saturday night- just like Guelph.
Then today we went through Leon where we postponed out lunch until 1:30 and walked around until we saw that people were actually eating and found the most wonderful little place with the best food of the trip!
In the afternoon we went off the main roads and drove through the magnificent mountains that define the area between Castille Lyon and Asturia. Incredible, snow capped, with windy roads that skirt the edges of rivers and the odd lake and go up into (unfortunately!) fog today. It was so similar to Switzerland and was a great diversion from the mesas and semi arid areas.
Tonight we are staying in Gijon on the Atlantic..a great place with a waterfront area developed into a park and historic area and with everyone out walking around again. We had the drink of the area...cider..in a tapas bar with a whole bunch of young folks who taught us how to drink it in one gulp..rapido, rapido..and we polished off a whole bottle for the big sum of 2.25 euroes.