Ribadesella June14

 It is 3:00 p.m. and I am sitting in my nice hotel room eating chips and drinking a soda.  This is my first REAL rest day in that I am not doing anything but recharging. Bilbao might have been such a day except for the wind, rain, roundabouts, and the computer debacle that befell me there. Today, no hiking boots, no ten mile cliff walks, just an eight and a half mile city amble that did not start until about 8:00 a.m. at which time the weather report alerted that in 54 minutes rain would fall right here.  This seemed unlikely because it was sunny at the time, but I took rain gear with me anyway because what with mountains on one side, anything could happen, and rain it did but not until a couple of hours later as my pedestrian tour was winding down.  

View while it is still (a little bit) dark out.  Too bad the twinkling lights do not show up better:

Bridge:

In the mornings, all the beeches are groomed for the day´s traffic:

If you were a ship, you would not want to run into those cliffs:

One of several cannons protecting the shore back in the day:

Sailing along without a sail:

A series of mosaics told about the history of the town in a semi-cartoonish form:

A detail from one showing a guy pointing to a whale while shouting "¡Ballenas!" and indeed you can see them.  The sign above informs that Ribadesella was a commercial port of the Romans:

Oops! A potential slip and fall!

Along the river:

Earlier this afternoon, whilst in the midst of my RELAXATION, a loud knock at the door shocked me out of my zen sate.  The cleaning people were surprised that the room was still occupied.  So, I, in turn, was not completely surprised, when later in the day, I returned from a turn on the beech to find that my key card did not work.  A visit to reception was in order.  There I was informed that I only had a reservation for one night and would have to pay for the second night out of pocket.  What a pain to go through a bzillion steps on my phone to retrieve the booking, but in the meantime, they also had found it, apologized and that was that.  I am not out on the street with my possessions locked away in room 212 after all. 

Speaking of being locked out, I am locked out of my Amazon account, which I discovered while trying to buy an audio book (Ilene´s friend Jessie´s book Breath Taking).  Making this purchase required two step authentication, which meant I would have had to activate "the phone number associated with this account." I could have done that but was unwilling to pay the $10.00 fee.  It was a matter of principle, not a matter of money!  Two calls to England during which I spoke to two different people with exotic accents were a dead end.  "Sorry, Madam."  I purchased the book through the audible app on my phone.  Where there is a will and all.