Hi, how are you, at the beginning of this week?
Have you ever heard of the midlife crisis?
In Spain it is very common to hear many people talking about the midlife crisis.
In my case, my friends gave me a series of surprises last Saturday with the intention that the midlife crisis would not enter me.
A quiet morning
Last Saturday morning was a routine morning like any other Saturday morning. I went to my mother's house, accompanied her, did the shopping and took the opportunity to do some general repairs in her house and around 13:00 h we ate together a typical dish of Asturias that I love very much which is the fabada asturiana (a dish based on beans with sausage and pork).
Because this dish is very caloric, one quickly notices that the blood rushes to the stomach and it is inevitable to want to lie down for a few minutes to take the traditional Spanish siesta. However, my WhatsApp started receiving 4 simultaneous WhatsApp notifications from different people, stating the following:
"Congratulations, Jose. Don't go to bed to sleep the siesta, today you have a buggy mountain route".
So, I didn't go to bed to take a nap and I put on some old clothes waiting for my friends to pick me up.
Buggy route
Half an hour after I received the notifications, one of my friends arrived at my house in his car. He told me that we had to go to Cangas de Narcea where we had booked 2 buggies and a monitor that would take us around Cangas de Narcea in a route of 2 hours of driving through the bush and roads enabled for this practice.
First of all, when we arrived at the place where the buggies were, we divided into the two cars. I got on initially with my friend Rubén, who with his goatee and my T-shirt everyone started to laugh at our resemblance to the characters Dick Dastardly and Muttley the dog from the cartoon series of the 70s Wacky Races.
Then we started the route through the mountains surrounding Cangas de Narcea by dirt roads and stone and at some points we also found some pools of water with the consequent mud that ended up in our clothes.
When we were halfway through the route and almost all of it uphill, we stopped for a while to contemplate the natural landscape from the top of the mountain and at the same time we took advantage of the time to take a group photo, although some of my friends had colds and we decided to keep some of us with masks.
We then continued our route through the mountain for another hour and finally, after arriving at the village, the owner of the buggies invited us to a tuna empanada and some beers.
Afterwards, several of my friends had commitments with their respective partners, so the other single guy in the group named Giuseppe and I arranged to meet for dinner, but with the condition that I would be buying dinner.
A perfect dinner
After the two hour buggy ride I went back home and to get rid of all the dust and mud I took a good shower, shaved and around 21:00 h I went to pick up my friend Giuseppe.
As I had not made any reservation, I decided to call by phone to a restaurant specialized in grilled meats that is located on the outskirts of Oviedo called Los Corzos and luckily there were no problems of capacity and they gave me a table for 22:00 h so that we had time before dinner to drink some good red Ribera del Duero wine before dinner.
We drank these wines at the bar of the restaurant's own bar, a few meters from the wood-fired grill, where they were beginning to advance the roasting of meats for those who had already ordered the food.
Due to the calories burned in the day of buggies and the smell of a pork rib that was being roasted on the barbecue, we decided to tell the waiter to tell us which table we had reserved due to the hunger we were getting.
Once seated at our table, they brought us the menu which looked very nice on the outside and even nicer on the inside, with its various grilled meats and veal and beef chops of different denominations of origin (Angus, Danish, German, Asturian, etc.).
As both Giuseppe and I are very carnivorous, we ordered a couple of grilled chorizos criollos with chimichurri sauce as a starter.
And for the main course we ordered a 1.5 kg Danish veal chop that was brought to us partially cooked on the grill accompanied by a stove that allowed us to finish cooking the meat on the grill to the point that each of us liked it. This type of roasting meat on the table is very typical of Asturias, but it has an unpleasant point because of the smell of roasted meat that catches the clothes.
As you can see, although it seemed like a lot of food for two people, we managed with a little effort to finish the steak.
However, a birthday without a dessert is no birthday and finally with some suffering we both ate a dessert. Specifically I ordered a Gijonesa cake made with almond nougat and my friend a cheesecake.
After this dessert we ordered a coffee each and I asked for the bill. As you can see, the bill was almost 100 euros, although when one enjoys it with good company one pays this money with pleasure.
After this dinner and with the tiredness of the whole day we finally went home to rest. I especially had to rest because on Sunday I had to celebrate my birthday with my family, but this will be another post in a few days.
Greetings and I hope you liked my 40th birthday.
