Gijón, Spain (June 2015)

Gijón was the last new city I had time to visit while I was in Spain last summer. I was just looking for somewhere beautiful and relaxing, and this place fit the bill. I did a lot of wandering, a lot of gazing at the water, and a lot of reading.

There are a lot of seniors in Gijón. My AirBnB host is a teacher and was telling me how her class sizes have been getting smaller as young families move elsewhere, to follow the jobs. I visited in the summer, however, and I think some young families had returned to spend time with the grandparents. I saw 4 generations of a single family out for a walk on the promenade – a man of retirement age was pushing his nonagenarian mother in a wheelchair, while beside him walked his daughter who was a few years older than I, and her grammar-school-aged daughter. How often do you see that in the United States?

Much of the city was very beautiful, but what surprised me was the shortage of restaurants. I’ve never had this much difficulty finding restaurants while just wandering around in Europe. The ones I did find were constantly full, because there just isn’t enough seating space to go around.