Finished? Good. I’ll get on with the story. As we were touring towns in Cantabria with the rest of the Bolados, someone in Nigeria was hacking into my Facebook and Gmail accounts and sending all of my contacts an e-mail claiming that we were in Wales, had been robbed of everything, and could you please send us $2,500 to settle the hotel bill?

Thankfully, most of my friends and family knew we were in Spain, not Wales. The atrocious grammar in the message was also a dead giveaway. Also, $2,500 on one hotel bill? Seriously? We were certainly not traveling on that kind of budget. The entire thing was ridiculous. Luckily, no money was transferred.

Later that evening, I managed to regain control of my Gmail account, a relatively painless process. Facebook was a different story — that took several e-mails and a few days.

The most amusing part was reading the e-mails people had written in response, from the friend who responded in Spanish to see if it really was me to my father, ever the jokester, who repeatedly asked, “How are the kids?”

Oh well. Everything turned out fine, and I learned my lesson: diversify the passwords.

Visiting Santander was always part of the plan, but when the Bolado reunion was set for July 10, we did a bit of rearranging in our schedule to make sure to be there for that. The event was a product of a Facebook group that started a few years ago; anyone named Bolado was invited to join. The greatest concentration was in Santander, which is where the name originates. My parents visited a few of the members last year, and they all hatched a plan to have as many Bolados as possible come to Santander in 2010.

While everyone was enthusiastic about it, turnout wasn’t great; the economic downturn kept lots of people from traveling. Only four of us traveled from outside of Spain: the three of us from the U.S. and one other Bolado from Mexico (he’s the very tall guy in back).

Still, with several more Bolados from around Spain, we had a good group together — and we had great hosts in Belén and her husband, Lee, who are both licensed tour guides.

We had expected a party. We hadn’t realized the reunion would include two days filled with sightseeing and several great meals.

On Friday morning, we all piled into a bus that Belén had rented. Our first stop was the cave of Altamira. Discovered in 1868, the cave has been called the Sistine Chapel of Paleolithic Art for the paintings on its ceilings of bison and other animals that have been dated to more than 14,000 years ago. The caves are currently closed to preserve the paintings (although Spain reportedly plans to reopen them in 2011 despite scientists’ concerns). It would be great to see the actual caves, but the museum, opened in 2001, features an impressive full-size re-creation of the caves.

From there, we headed to Santillana del Mar, a cute historic town that’s home to the Colegiata, a Romanesque church and former Benedictine monastery.

After a hearty lunch (there was no such thing as a light meal around here), we made a quick stop in nearby Comillas to see the Capricho de Gaudí. The vast majority of Antoni Gaudí’s buildings are in his native Cataluña; the Capricho is one of the few buildings outside of that province.

The word “capricho” means whim or caprice in English. Whimsical doesn’t even begin to describe this building. Those are sunflower tiles all over the facade. It used to house a restaurant that is now closed. Much to the chagrin of the Spaniards, it is currently owned by a Japanese company, which appears to be taking some liberties with the restoration.

By this point, we were pretty exhausted, and I was preoccupied with a technical issue that my parents had alerted me to earlier in the day. But more on that shortly…

As we were driving to the coast from the mountains, my aunt Lourdes was making her way by train from Madrid. We met in Puente Arce, a suburb just outside of Santander, where the three of us would be staying with Belén and Lee, two local tour guides who were also organizing the Bolado reunion that weekend. (More on that later.)

Belén, whose second surname (i.e. her mother’s maiden name) is Bolado, had met my parents the year before, when they’d visited the area and gotten in touch with a few of the members of the “Bolados around the world” Facebook group. This year, she was in charge of bringing together as many Bolados as possible on July 10 in Santander. It was just the three of us — Nathan, Lourdes, and me — representing our branch of the Bolados, and Belén and Lee, her British husband, had generously offered to host us in their home.

There were introductions all around and hearty hugs from my aunt, who was as happy to see us as we were to see her. We relaxed that evening, drinking wine, eating the great spread that Belén had set out, and getting to know each other.

We were expected in Santander, so we had to bid the gorgeous Picos goodbye. The trip from Potes to Santander isn’t far, but we took our time and made a few stops along the way. First up: the monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana, a few kilometers outside of Potes.

The monastery is home to the largest piece of the True Cross. That sounded cool, but unfortunately, when we stopped by, the chapel in which the relics were housed was locked, so we couldn’t get a glimpse up close. I imagine it was because Mass was about to start.

Our next stop was another church, the tiny Nuestra Señora de Lebeña nestled in the mountains. It has some Mozarab architectural features (namely, the arches), which are common all over southern Spain but appear on just two churches in Cantábria.

Inside, we got a tour of the church from a charming local woman who gave us a detailed explanation of the small town’s most prized possession, a statue of Mary breastfeeding Jesus that has been housed in the church for centuries. Well, with the exception of a few years when she disappeared. The statue was recovered, much to the townspeople’s relief, not too long ago in the house of a rich art collector in southern Spain. The guide joked that the statue had a beach vacation. She sits in her rightful spot now. (Unfortunately, there was a no-photos policy inside the church.)

From there, we left the mountains and didn’t stop until we were in sight of San Vicente de la Barquera, a picturesque fishing village on the Cantabrian coast.

The entire coastline is littered with adorable towns, but this one is renowned for being prettier than most. We stopped to take a look around and have a lunch of the local specialty: sardines. Lightly salted and fried, they were simply perfect.

We stopped by the church in town, an enormous structure that towers over the entire city. Built in the thirteenth century with money from local fishermen, it looks like a fisherman’s church — brawny, sturdy, and no-nonsense. No frills here.

We were unable to enter either the church or the nearby castle, as we had arrived smack-dab in the middle of the afternoon siesta. Nothing would reopen until 4:30 at the earliest, so we hopped back in the car and headed toward Puente Arce, a suburb of Santander, where some very important people waited to meet us!

July 7, 8:20 p.m. Ten minutes until kickoff of the Spain-Germany World Cup semifinal game. Nathan and I are in Potes, Cantabria, on the edge of the Picos de Europa, sitting in a restaurant downstairs from the pensión where we’re staying. Said restaurant has set up the biggest screen in town to watch the game.

Suddenly, Nathan turns to me. “I forgot my shirt.”

He is wearing a plain gray T-shirt, not the green FIFA World Cup T-shirt that he’d bought in Johannesburg. He wore it first in Mondoñedo, when Spain beat Honduras, and for each Spain match since then.

“Just wear this one,” I say.

“But Spain hasn’t lost when I’ve worn the shirt.”

“OK. Go get it. Hurry.”

He returns before kickoff with the shirt. Spain, needless to say, wins, 1-0, and advances to the World Cup final.

The Picos de Europa are spectacular. The Cantabrian range is lush and green, but in this small, concentrated area, gray craggy peaks shoot straight up into the sky.

Though we didn’t have time for a long trek, we did manage to spend a few hours hiking around the mountains on our first full day in Potes.

We drove to Espinama, a town a few kilometers away, and left the car there. Then we took a bus to Fuente Dé, where we hopped on the cable car that carried us to the top of the mountain. It did the hard work for us; from the top, we’d walk downhill all the way to Espinama, about 12 kilometers away.

The views from the top were incredible. The towering peaks were suddenly right in front of us.

The path took us right past the lingering snow and ice that refused to melt despite the summer heat.

It was crowded at first, as it was the high season and the cable car is a popular attraction. But most were returning to Fuente Dé via the cable car, so the farther we walked, the more the crowds thinned out. Well before the halfway point, we were all alone.

Well, not completely alone. We had plenty of four-legged company.

In the summer, local farmers bring their sheep, goats and cows up into the mountains to graze. They used to live in small stone cabins near the fields; it was in these cabins that farmers would make their Cabrales cheeses, prior to modern production methods. We saw several of these in disrepair along the way.

We’d been told it was an easy hike, because it was all downhill. But people seem to underestimate the toll that walking downhill for 12 kilometers can take on one’s joints. The path started out nicely enough, but the last third or so got so steep that our ankles, knees and shins were begging for mercy.

We finally made it back to Espinama, where our car was waiting for us. We had just enough time to get back to Potes, change, and scout out a spot to watch the big event that night: Spain vs. Germany in the World Cup semi-final.

After bidding everyone farewell, we headed off into the mountains. Destination: Potes, a small town in the Picos de Europa, the tallest peaks in the Cantabrian range in northern Spain.

We took the scenic route there, which meant lots of harrowing two-lane roads that hugged the sides of rocky mountains.

We opted for this over the bigger highway because we wanted to stop by the Cueva el Cares, where production of Cabrales cheese — a really stinky local blue that Carolina loves — is demonstrated.

Something like 90 percent of Spain’s cheese is made in the north, which is green, fertile and perfectly suited for dairy cows and sheep. Most of that production is clustered in the Picos de Europa region. I’d had a huge hankering for cheese when we were in dairy-less Asia; suddenly, we found ourselves smack-dab in the middle of one of the best cheese-producing regions on the planet.

The tour, unfortunately, was not great. It began in a damp, cold cave, similar to those used to age the Cabrales. For some inexplicable reason, the tour creators felt the need to add sound effects — think clanking cow bells and pounding hammers — which made it nearly impossible to hear the guide. And, of course, I had to do my best simultaneously translating for Nathan. It was a mess.

But we did learn some interesting things about Cabrales production. For one thing, it’s not made of goat’s milk, which one would assume from the name. (Cabra = goat in Spanish.) The name comes from the Cabrales region where the cheese is made; it’s traditionally made with just cow’s milk, although these days a bit of sheep’s milk is blended in sometimes. The cheese in molded into rounds and aged two to five months, to give plenty of time for the penicillin molds to turn the cheese nice and blue.

At the end came the best part: tasting! The tour guide set out lots of crackers with good chunks of cheese on them. Everyone helped themselves, although some silly people on the tour took just one taste. Nathan and I didn’t want the poor tour guide to be saddled with leftovers, so we did what we could.

We hit the road again and finally made it to Potes, a lovely medieval town nestled in the mountains.

As one of the larger towns in the Picos, Potes is popular with tourists, both domestic and international. We were there in the middle of the high season, but even then it didn’t seem so crowded. We checked into our cute pensión and spent the evening strolling around the city.

We were able to spend the weekend with the family, but when they went back to work on Monday, we took our car and drove to Oviedo to walk around the Asturian capital for the day.

Upon our arrival, we immediately headed to get lunch at Tierra Astur. Carolina’s cousins had brought the family here last year and she was determined to come back. Located on a street lined with sidrerías, Tierra Astur specializes in Asturian foods — fabulous meats, cheeses and other local delicacies, including sidra, of course. Inside, the restaurant features sawdust on the floors and curved, planked walls evoking the inside of a cask, and there is a small store overflowing with more packaged treats to take home.

We snagged a table on the deck outside and ordered sidra, a salad and a platter of assorted cheeses and cured meats. Our platter, served on a cutting board, came with five varieties of jamon and sausages, seven varieties of cheese, a small block of membrillo (quince) and nuts.

It was delicious, but we couldn’t finish it. That platter was meant for two, but I don’t know how two people could ever put away that much cheese.

After lunch, we strolled over to the cathedral. It was from this spot that the very first pilgrimage to Santiago began; the Asturian king Alfonso II left here in the early 800s and created the Camino Primitivo, the first pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela.

The cathedral is important because of the many relics kept there. Asturias was the only place not conquered by the Moors, and Oviedo became a refuge for relics that were under siege in other parts of Spain. The highlights included two important crosses: the Victory Cross, whose wooden core was carried in the Battle of Covadonga that began the Reconquista, and the Cross of the Angels, which is the symbol of the city of Oviedo.

As we walked around town, we spotted a municipal tourism office and stopped in to get a map and some information on the pre-romanesque buildings just outside of the city. Inside the office, Nathan was intrigued by a large poster of a statue of Woody Allen.

“Is there a statue of Woody Allen here?!” he asked.

I had no idea, but I offered to ask. Turns out there is; Woody Allen is a big fan of Oviedo and often plays jazz there. The woman at the tourism office marked the location of the statue with an “X” on the map, and we drove over there to see the life-sized statue. Shana, Eddie, this one’s for you:

Most of you probably know the story by now. Last year, my mother was doing a bit of genealogical research on her father’s side in Spain. We knew that her grandfather, my great-grandfather, had left Asturias for Cuba, but we didn’t know too much else. He never spoke much about the family he left behind, and he never returned to Spain. My mom, using the few clues she had, actually found two of my grandfather’s first cousins living in Asturias.

Many Skype phone calls ensued, and in July 2009, my grandfather, his wife, my mom, my brother and I went to Spain to get to know the family there and see the tiny mountain town where my great-grandfather grew up.

This time around, Nathan and I spent a weekend with the cousins in Pravia.

We toured Gijón on a rainy day, we cheered on Spain together when the team played Paraguay, and on Sunday, we met at my grandfather’s cousin Delfina and Rogelio’s house for a family dinner with five of their six children and their spouses.

Rogelio proudly showed off his garden, where he grows kiwis, plums, gooseberries, and apples, among many other things.

While Spain’s Rafael Nadal won the Wimbledon men’s single title on the TV, we cleared the table of jamón serrano, empanadas, Delfina’s ensalada rusa and the tarta de Santiago we brought back with us. There was no shortage of food, or drink either — Pablo regularly poured sidra (Asturian hard cider) for everyone. There was also plenty of rapid-fire Spanish; poor Nathan did his best to keep up, and I learned exactly how difficult on-the-spot translating can be.

While staying in Pravia, we also made a quick side trip with our hosts Pablo and Sonia to the airport to pick up a rental car so that we could continue our adventures across northern Spain. On our way out of town two days later, we stopped once again at Delfina and Rogelio’s house, to have some breakfast, say goodbye, and beg them once more to come visit everyone in Miami.

We got a “maybe.” Hopefully that’ll morph into a “yes,” and we’ll see them in Florida soon!

From Santiago de Compostela, we caught a bus that would take us back across Galicia to Aviles in Asturias. From there, it was just a short train ride to Pravia, where Carolina’s cousins live.

The bus, an Alsa Supra, was easily the most luxurious we’d been on during our entire trip. In India, a luxury bus meant that it had four seats across, two by two. I didn’t realize there were other configurations, but sure enough, we rode on one with five seats per row. The Alsa Supra, however, had just three big, cushy, reclining seats in each row. It also had a bathroom, TVs, Wi-Fi, power outlets, and a self-service snack bar. Just what a pilgrim needs on his way home.

With the new interstate highway still under construction, the bus route actually took us through many towns we’d seen and on many roads we’d walked a few days before. It was a slightly eerie experience, a little deja vu: There was the giant furniture store near the albergue in Vilalba, there on the left was the albergue itself, here now was the road we had walked down and the place we had stopped for lunch that day, and there was the gym where the high schoolers slept, and the bar where we had breakfast, and the spot where we discussed the roadside flowers with the woman who had planted them. What had taken us 11 days to walk took us four hours to drive. It added an interesting perspective to the experience of walking the Camino de Santiago. And was it coincidence that it now all whizzed by muted under a rather dreary gray sky?