Lierganes

Last weekend, for my B-day, Inaki and I took a night away in the quaint town of Lierganes. It's in the region of Cantabria and my love affair with the area continues to be hot and heavy. They were holding a fall festival and I've been missing the feeling of fall in pdx and Halloween, so we went to check it out. We stayed in an adorable B and B in the center of the 800 resident village. The view from our room was of the "Tetas" a pair of nubbins on top of the mountain behind the town. Tetas means tits in English and this picture will explain why they are called as such...

We asked the receptionist about hiking up there and every time she said "tetas" we couldn't help but snicker a little. We planned to cruise up the next day and walked around the fall festival for the rest of the evening. They had some booths with local goods, some traditional dancing and even a Roman era bridge.

While at the bridge, we discovered a metal statue of a man sitting on a rock. Apparently he is called "fish-man" and is part of a legend in the town. Ages ago there was a young boy who lived in Lierganes and loved to swim. One day, the river caught him and swept him away from town, down stream. No one heard from him again. Years later, some fishermen off the coast of Cadiz (one of the southern most cities in Spain) found something rather large caught in their net. When they pulled the net out of the water, they discovered it was a man... sort of. His skin was scaly, his feet and hands were webbed and he had something that looked like gills growing out of his neck. He was barely alive and by the time the fishermen got him to a hospital, he was on his last legs. With his dying breath he whispered the word "Lierganes" and the townspeople believe he was the boy who had been swept away so many years ago. Pretty cool.

That night we drank some local beers and ate mexican food, which is rare in Spain. It was great.

The next day, we were eating by 9, checking out by 1030 and on the road up to the tetas by 11. We heard that a few restaurants were doing a "mountain man" lunch and we wanted to be sure to be back for that. Here are a few photos on the way up.

It was a great hike and the views from the top were fantastic. I mean, I guess you could call it a hike, but it was mostly on a paved road. Here's the view. Off to the right of the 2nd pic, you can actually see the Cantabrian Sea.

We practically rolled down the mountain to get to that mountain man lunch. It was only semi worth it. The meal started with callos and jija. I have been able to escape callos (intestines) for the most part and decided to be a mountain man about it and dig in. I ate my half, but had an upset stomach on the way home just thinking about the fact that there were intestines in my intestines. The jija was yummy! Ground chorizo to be eaten with bread. It made for some crazy-stinky burps though and Inaki started yelling out "jija!" (pronounced: hee-ha) every time one escaped him. We thought it was hilarious.

The next plate was fabulous, mountain man stew. It was made of white beans, various veggies and spices, and all the sacraments: morcilla, chorizo and ham. Sososososossoso good!

The rest of the meal isn't even worth showing, but the first 2 courses were great, minus the tripe.

So, my b-day weekend was faba-daba-do, thanks to my sweet husby and all the love from friends and fam. Thanks guys!