My Favorite Mistake

We’re going to kick this party off with more words of wisdom from Bill Bryson. I read this on the bus back home Saturday evening, and it couldn’t have been a more fitting passage for the series of events that took place this weekend. Backpacking through Europe at the time, he had originally planned on traveling throughout central Europe and slowly making his way to Rome. And then, one day, he decided not to:

“Well, I’m sorry. I had intended to reach Rome as you would expect me to, in a logical, systematic way. But after nearly a month beneath the endlessly damp skies of northern Europe, I longed for sunshine. It was as simple as that. So it was with only the odd wrenching spasm of guilt that I abandoned my planned itinerary, caught an airplane, and bounded with a single leap across fifteen hundred miles of Europe. Traveling is more fun – hell, life is more fun – if you can treat it as a series of impulses.”

Amen, Bill.

This weekend, I explored the coast of northern Spain in the good company of four friends. We didn’t have an itinerary – arriving and leaving when we pleased, making decisions based on whims, and ending up on the wrong bus to Oviedo (NOT Santander) at the end of our first day. More on this subject later. Our first destination was Llanes, a coastal city about three hours west of Bilbao. Llanes is known for its amazing shoreline. The few beaches in this area are quite small, because most of the coastline is comprised of cliffs that drop straight down to the ocean below. This is quite common for northern Spain, but what’s so special about Llanes is the nature of the rock that makes up these cliffs. In this region, the cliffs are perforated my hundreds and hundreds of small holes, so that when the waves crash against them, the water enters the cliff walls from every direction. After the waves retreat, the cliff spits out a hundred little waterfalls that churn back into the ocean. If you get really lucky, you could see a bufón, which is when the water enters the rock, has nowhere to go, and spits out the top of the cliff like a geyser. We just saw some baby ones, but the entire coastline was mesmerizing. I’ve never seen water look so busy!

After an amazing, enormous, and CHEAP lunch (the trifecta), we ended up hiking at a leisurely pace down the coastline of the tiny neighboring of Cue. We made our way down the rolling green hills that sat above the cliffs, sharing the countryside with nobody but ourselves and the every-so-often sheep or cow. We explored downtown a bit, grabbed some food and headed toward our 9 PM bus to Santander – but not before squeezing in a moonlight tour of an empty, beautiful beach nestled in a tiny cove. Fully completing our day in Llanes, we headed to the bus stop.

With a closed ticket counter and broken ticket machine, we learned we had to buy our tickets on board the bus when it came. Waiting in the cool night air and ready for a nap along the way, we were all quite eager to hop on board. We bought our tickets from a disgruntled, unfriendly driver who shuffled us into the bus and took off. I said a mental goodbye to Llanes as we pulled away and drove off into the dark. We headed back west to Santander, a larger coastal city just an hour outside of Bilbao. Or so we thought. Ten minutes into the ride, my casual conversation with my bus-neighbor taught us that, in truth, we got on the wrong bus – we had taken the line from Santander…to Oviedo. Where the hell is Oviedo?!

At this moment occurred my absolute favorite part of the trip. After five initial seconds of panic, we all looked around at one another, shrugged, and laughed (and realized that passengers-turned-spectators were having a good laugh as well). We went onward into the night to Oviedo, a city we knew nothing about, except that we’d be there in an hour and ten minutes. We didn’t know where we were going to sleep (don’t worry, we found a place), whether this town was actually inhabited by people, or what we were going to do on the five hour bus ride home on Saturday night. But we went. And it was great.

As it turns out, Oviedo is actually really lovely. Nestled an hour from the coast in the middle of northern Spain, Oviedo is the capital of Asturias (two autonomous communities over from País Vasco). The next day was spent exploring its old quarter, cathedral, Sunday market, and a lovely park complete with peacocks for spectators – all in the perfect sunshine that graced the coast of Spain for (almost) the whole weekend. On Saturday evening, we set back for Bilbao, fully content with our adventure but ready for a good night’s sleep.

What a refreshing feeling it was for such a huge wrench in our plans to make absolutely no difference at all. It’s got me thinking a bit, and it’s made me wonder whether we’re happier people with itineraries or not. They certainly offer some order in your life, which can be comforting or sometimes downright necessary – but I found it quite refreshing to suddenly be without any restraint at all. We were completely free to roam and see what we pleased.

Isn’t that the reason we travel in the first place? Is the feeling of freedom we extract from exploring really that separated from the sense of awe that we get when we take in the sight of expansive cliffs, massive oceans, or a beautiful culture that's different from ours? In both cases, I think we all have an innate desire to seek the unknown. We yearn to travel, to learn, to meet new people, to try new foods. Comfort is good, but I think we were designed to shake it up every once in a while too. And for that, I am grateful.

I hope you all keep on finding your own ways to keep on shaking, too.