Gijón: five things

1. Peleón is the word for bad wine. Literally, it means “fighter,” ’cause, you know, it fights back. If you’re served a peleón, what you do is add sparkling mineral water, which sort of makes it into a wine cooler.

2. The prevailing fashion for women is sort of haute metal chick: elaborately messy hair, lots of jewelry, lots of makeup, all clothing very body-conscious, and very pointy, high-heeled shoes & boots. Which no one seems to have any problem walking in.

3. To my great surprise, I understood between 85 and 90% of what people said, and my spoken Spanish turned out to be good enough to, for example, translate dirty jokes back into English. (It helped that the jokes in question were accompanied by colorful gestures.)

4. We joined a gym for the week and I took two Pilates classes. The teacher told me that she’s the first Pilates teacher in Gijón, and kept apologizing for the “basic” level of the classes. But they were definitely hard enough.

5. The local recipe I’ll want to learn how to make: fabada, a stew with white beans and sausage. Apparently you can buy the appropriate beans from the Internet.