Thewesternprovinceblog

Day 3 – Begin act 2 – Spain – exploring Santander.

Hello everyone, today was the first full day in Spain and the first day we haven’t had somewhere to need to be by. The blighty leg as always had been pretty challenging and I was feeling a little bit tired, so an easy one was on the cards for today.

Chatting last night to my man Terry he suggested we check out an air raid bunker from the Spanish Civil war in town tomorrow as he needed to kill a few hours waiting for his bus, so without any other plans I obliged.

I was up and running in good order and went down to meet him and grab a café con leche. Brew was good but the bunker was shut and has weird opening hours but not open today so we took a walk down to the Seafront to the Centro Botín.

Contrary to the name there is no loot to be seen here and is more of an art gallery. It was a brief but Bizarro visited there and then we had a stroll up towards the Magdalena but didn’t get a chance to visit it. You need to plan it properly how far out of town it is.

We strolled round and chatted and this guy has done quite a bit of travelling, especially in Eastern Europe and had some stories to tell about the Soviets being bullies out that way, especially in Gdansk – Read up the Gdansk Shipyard strike of 1980 and the brutal Soviet crackdown and how this started a series of protests and strikes all across the Eastern Bloc right up to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. All interesting stuff. Eventually we ambled on back and grabbed some grub ahead of siesta time. After this it was time for him to be grabbing his bags and getting down to the bus station ready to head to Bilbao. We said our goodbyes and will stay in touch. All in all was a good encounter meeting him. I am now back at my gaffe having a nap myself. I will then head out for some food and drinks later and see if we meet anyone interesting tonight.

Tomorrow we hit the rails for Salamanca!