An intense but wonderful weekend with family and friends, what more could I ask for?

Hi friends, I hope you are all in good health. It has been many months since I last wrote in this community, which I read very often, but taking advantage of the fact that this weekend I have enjoyed a lot with my family on Saturday and with my friends on Sunday I could not pass the opportunity to write a few lines and share with you my weekend.

Last Saturday, it was a great day and perfectly planned for weeks. My aunt and uncle from Madrid and their daughter were planning to visit us again after a month without coming to my region, which is Asturias, located in the northern part of Spain. Because the last time they had been with us my cousin Natalia had loved to go to a museum of watermills, so we decided to plan to go again to the Asturian town of Taramundi, where the largest museum of mills in Spain is located.

Shortly after 11 am, my uncles, who had slept at my late grandmother's house, arrived at my mother's house and we organized to go with my mother's brother to the town of Taramundi. This town is about 30 kilometers from our house and to get there we used two of our cars, since there is no easy way to get there by public transportation.Therefore, before 12 noon, we arrived at the town of Taramundi, which is a town that is in the mountains that separates the provinces of Asturias and Galicia and as you can see in the pictures, has spectacular views and its town center is very nice and is especially careful because of its tourist interest.

The main visit we made in Taramundi was to the museum of the hydraulic mills, unfortunately my cell phone had a mishap and would not stay on for more than a minute, which meant that I could not take new photos of this place that I have already visited three times with family and friends. Therefore, in order to explain a little of what we can see in this museum, I will use some pictures I took a few months ago.

The visit to the museum is divided into three parts:

In the first part, in a small projection room we were shown an informative and introductory video about the history of the mills.This video lasts about 3 minutes and tells us how man to have a better use of the cereals needed to grind them and how over the centuries this milling was evolving, from the use of manual mills, the use of hydraulic mills and the use of water as a source of power generation to move millstones in the middle of the last century.

The second part of the visit to the museum consists of a room where there is a series of manual mills, a pair of mills that are powered by the force of water. In this room there are small packages of corn and wheat, so that visitors can make their own flour using one of the existing mills. As you can see my cousin, my aunt and I are expert flour millers and using some of the manual mills we managed to grind a few grams of flour.

The third part of the museum is the most extensive and is located in the exterior part and in it one can enjoy mills of different origins such as the Chinese mill and the Brazilian mill that are based on the use of mallets operated with the foot or by using the potential energy of water to crush the grains.

In this outdoor area, one can also enjoy a large water wheel that drives a mechanism of one of the water mills that was in the second part of the museum and that one remains spellbound watching as the wheel turns helped by the momentum that gives the water.

After this visit that we finished around 13:30 hours because we had arranged to have lunch at 14:30 with two other uncles of mine, we decided to go back to our village and enjoy the great barbecue that my aunt Isabel was preparing. As you can see the pork ribs, chicken, sausages and black pudding looked amazing and after the miles of condition and the walk we did through the museum of the mills, the hunger with which we ate the barbecue was spectacular.

After lunch, and as a good Spaniard, I could not resist sleeping an hour of siesta, because for this Saturday there was still an important appointment that I had promised to my cousin, which was to go to the fair that was held in a nearby town so she could enjoy a couple of hours in different attractions such as trampolines, bouncy castles and bumper cars.

Finally, after being at the fair, I returned with her to the family house, we had barbecue dinner left over from the midday meal and finally, after watching some TV, I went to bed to sleep, since Sunday was expected to be just as intense as Saturday.

On Sunday, although I had my relatives who do not come very often to Asturias, I had a commitment as every year with my friends. The weekend after October 12, the town celebrates a festival in honor of the Virgen del Pilar, who is the patron saint of the town. Every year my friends and I organize a meal at one of the local restaurants, but with the goal of going before and after the meal to the fair and enjoy the live music and drink some beers.

After writing the corresponding post and after playing with one of my cats, around 1:30 pm I went to enjoy the fair and the live music with my friends. We were there for almost an hour and a half drinking beers, although in my case due to a health problem my beer was non-alcoholic.

Once the music of the orchestra came to an end, my 6 friends and I went to eat at the restaurant El Alamo in a town that is 10 minutes drive from the party. There, we had ordered a menu with two typical dishes of our region which are beans with clams that were spectacular and some Asturian cachopos (beef fillets stuffed with cheese and Iberian ham all battered with egg and breadcrumbs). This meal, including the traditional "sobremesa" where we updated our day to day life, made us extend our stay in the restaurant until after 8 pm.

When we all thought that Sunday was over, passing by the area of the fair we saw that there were still many people enjoying the good weather and we stopped at one of the bars in town and around 10 pm began again to play one of the orchestras in the town square and I did not hesitate to go there for a while with one of my friends, drink the last beer without alcohol and go home to rest because on Monday it was necessary to return to the routine of work.

Despite being an intense weekend, one feels happy when one sees it with a little perspective, with how much fun one has with family and friends.

I hope you liked my intense weekend.

A strong and warm embrace.

Original photos taken with my iPhone SE.

Cover created with Canva (free version).

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version).