Arrived in Oviedo!

On Friday, March 13th (yes, Friday the 13th!), I (Sofia) drove in Spain for the first time.

We had traveled by train on our last city-to-city route, and the stress of hauling way too much stuff for 3 adults, plus the stress of trying to get to a train on time (we got into our seats literally a minute or so before the train departed!) was more than we wanted to deal with again.

So, we rented a car.

I was so nervous! This would literally be my first time driving in a country other than the US.

I had prepared myself by reaching out to a "Bilbao Expat Families" WhatsApp group to ask folks what they thought I would need to know to be successful driving in Spain. That, plus what I knew from Morgan's prep research, plus just having watched the driving as a pedestrian for the previous three weeks, let me know what I needed to know.

Spain is known for it being very difficult to get a drivers license. One thing Morgan had learned in their research is that, during a driving test, if someone does something that could possibly endanger a pedestrian in any way, they fail.

And, it shows in the driving and also in the behaviors of the pedestrians. Pedestrians know when they have the right of way, and trust the drivers to act accordingly.

I could feel the difference as a driver. Where in the US, there's many times when I'm making a choice about whether to stop for a pedestrian in various circumstances of questionable right-of-way, in my driving in Spain, I knew what was expected of me: to stop and wait. It was relaxing.

Which means that driving in Spain, at least in the areas I was driving, was at least as orderly, if not more, than in the US, making it super easy to navigate.

So, we packed up the car in Bilbao, having been charmed by and feeling connected with the city. A benefit of driving was that we could choose to stop, so we made a super lovely stop in Santander at a beach facing the Bay of Biscay. It was a sandy beach with big rocks, crashing waves, and millions of tiny shells (especially ones that Morgan called "unicorn horns"). We were all enchanted by the beauty and power of that place.

Driving into the late evening, we finally arrived at our apartment for 2 weeks in Oviedo.

We've been in Oviedo for four days now, and are already pretty clear that this is not the place for us. There's just no way it could compete with Bilbao on a number of counts.

Bilbao has the most amazing playgrounds, and about 2/3 of the playgrounds are truly epic.

Oviedo's playgrounds, on the other hand, are truly disappointing, every single one of them.

And, it's not just about what the kids get to play on.

Bilbao has what they call a "plaza culture", where plazas (big open areas between buildings) have restaurants along the edge with outdoor seating and a big playground. In the evenings and weekends, the adults often hang out at the restaurants eating & socializing while their kids play quite independently. Which speaks both to the support of children and the support of parents in the culture there.

Oviedo looks like it's kinda trying to have a plaza culture, except the play areas are often tiny and are only good for 2 year olds who are helped by their parents.

The restaurant food in Oviedo is quite expensive.

Bikes are not very welcome in Oviedo. There are few places to lock them, and it's illegal to lock them to light posts, signs, etc. A city being unwelcoming to bicycles is a pretty serious dealbreaker for us! We were looking to move to somewhere where biking was safer and more welcomed than Seattle, not less!

The one main complaint I had of Bilbao was that I couldn't find tofu. Asian restaurants didn't offer tofu, and the "Asian grocery stores" that we found were more like candy shops with a few Asian foods and no tofu.

Given how favorably Bilbao measures up to Oviedo, we've made a pretty big decision. We still have a few cities that we're booked to spend time in (Gijon, very close to Oviedo; Vigo, which is close to Portugal; and Santander, which we added to our itinerary after our enchanted stop on the way here), but after that time, we start getting into tourist season and can't actually find short term rentals anywhere we want to be. So, we've decided to move to Bilbao area for 3 - 6 months (however long we would need to be there to get a lease) after our travels. We may still decide to ultimately move somewhere else, but that will ensure we have a place to live somewhere that we know we really enjoy.