Norte – Day 15 – Santander
With our Camino walking behind us for this trip we returned to Santander to spend our 2 unplanned days.
Yesterday we awoke in Mogro to another rainy day. And with not much agenda, we enjoyed a leisure breakfast at our hotel…thankfully the breakfast was one of the better ones we experienced on this trip. In one of the places we stayed on this trip, their defintion of breakfast consisted of packaged processed foods similar to what you would find in a convience store. Somewhat akin to twinkies or little debbie cakes. Anyway this one was above average so we enjoyed a few more cups of of something that resembled espresso from the Nescafe machine before packing up and getting a taxi back to Santander.
Our taxi ride back to Santander was uneventful (Yeah!), and we found ourselves at a Hotel Bahia (Hotel Bay) a few blocks from where the passanger ferry dropped us off from Somo a few days ago. We went inside to drop off our luggage and were pleasantly suprised to be allowed to check in early. We booked the hotel that morning via the Booking.com app which has been our secret tool to finding accomidations for this trip.
With our bags stowed we gathered up our dirty laundy and headed off to the local lavenderia (laundrymat). We had a better experience with laundry then the last place we used in Bilbao. Not sure what happened but one in Bilbao must have been a chemical bath and super centrifuge or something as everything we washed there is now permanently wrinkled. Anyway with a more mondane laundry event behind us we set out to find some grub. Bingo right next door to the lavenderia was a pizza place. Mind you, not that high class pizza we have in the states, but some thing that looks like pizza. We checked out the reviews, and with 4 stars we thought we would give it go. The pizza was hot, but pretty much flavorless.
After grubbing out, we figured we needed to walk off some of the calories so we set out to enjoy the sunshine that appeared, and headed off to walk the promanade and explore one of the parks we skipped a few days ago, Peninsula de La Magdalena (which translates to “cupcake”). Cupcake indeed describes this beautiful park which is home to the Palicio de La Magdalena (a former palace I think..). We spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening enjoying the parks and promanade. After a big lunch we only needed a light dinner so we stopped in the local supermarketo to get a few prepared salads and enjoyed them on some benches in the park near the hotel before calling it a day.
Santander is a beautiful city that has an expansive promanade, parks and beachs right on its doorstep. The residents really seem to enjoy its natural wonders, and value their parks. All the parks are well cared for and enjoyed by the locals. Aside from a little graffiti, the parks are clean and cared for, and not overun with homeless people, which is a signficant problem in Seattle. We could learn something from the communities of Spain. Parks are places to be treasured, and valued. Something is wrong with our concept of parks in the states… its always the first place budget cuts occur when times are tough economically. Ironic in that in tough times, people need encourgament, and perhaps might find that encouragement in pleasant park.
