Santander
7/16/2025 - 7/25/2025
On 7/16/25, we left Segovia to head to Spain’s northern coast to Santander. We had yet another miserable travel day! We left the apartment in Segovia much earlier than necessary because we weren’t confident the taxi we emailed would be at our pick up point in the plaza. And if it wasn’t, we wanted to be sure we had plenty of time to come up with a plan B. The taxi was there right at 12:30 as requested… which was good, but meant we would be sitting in the train station for over an hour until our train arrived. Make that an hour and a half with delays. No problem, we had books to read and were fine with the wait. Once the train came, we had a four hour ride in the train car from hell! Apparently there was an issue with the AC in our car. We walked through the rest of the train, and it was pretty pleasant, but our car was freaking Dante’s Inferno! And, of course, there weren’t open seats anywhere else for us to move to. We literally sat there with sweat running down our faces, backs, all the places! It was miserable!
We emerged from the train looking like we had just finished a hot yoga class to meet up with our Airbnb host who picked us up from the train station and took us to the apartment… so that part of the adventure was really nice. Once we got settled in, we walked across the street to a little family run restaurant and had a pretty awesome (and ridiculously cheap) dinner. We stayed in Santander for 9 days. Grady’s daughter and son-in-law, Emily and Brian joined us on 7/18/25.
I wouldn’t necessarily put Santandar on your “must see” list, but it was actually pretty nice and suited our needs perfectly. We wanted some place affordable and with decent proximity to Bilbao (where the airport is) and Pico de Europa National Park. It is a small city with a population of about 200,000. Some areas are pretty much “working class”, but there are also some very touristy areas – although I wouldn’t consider it a tourist town. The beaches are beautiful, the port is really nice, there are lots of pretty parks and green spaces, a great restaurant area and market (which we visited a lot!), and a palace and a light house. Like most of the towns we visited, it is part of the El Camino de Santiago northern route (just a little tidbit of info for anyone looking to walk 510 miles).
We explored pretty much every inch of the city… mostly by foot, but also by car, and by e-bike. We also did a boat tour and saw it from the water. We covered all our bases! But mostly we walked… we walked A LOT! I think Brian and Emily exceeded 25,000 steps several consecutive days!
We visited the Maritime Museum and Aquarium which was really nice. We learned a lot about the maritime history of Santander… most of which I promptly forgot! But we at least got a few pictures!
Like most European cities, there were a lot of pretty green spaces and parks and statues. Some of the statues were pretty cool. Some were just weird (the naked people statue falls in the weird category). The status of the man’s face was FREAKY! It is basically many layers of metal with different cut outs. The sheets of metal are lined up one in front of the next and each is about 2 inches apart. The freaky thing about it (which you can’t see from the photo) is that looking at it in person, you can’t tell what it is. Emily and I stared at it for several minutes trying to figure it out… but when you hold your camera up, you immediately see the face! It's probably one of those things you need to see in person to appreciate. We were both pretty amazed!
The restaurant district had an awesome market! If Brian and Emily were ever missing, it was a pretty safe bet that they were in this market getting empanadas!
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