The rain in Spain

  Santander, Spain
Thursday, April 8, 1999

The totally torturous 24 hour ferry ride from Plymouth to Santander nearly killed me. I made full use of my 'sac mal de mer' and spent 23 of the 24 hours glued to my bunk as any attempt at standing up, let alone walking around, would send me straight back to bed with a roller-coaster stomach and another sick bag. Thankfully I had a cabin to myself because I wouldn't have been much company to my three scheduled companions.



At the port I wandered around vaguely, with the 'Officino Turismo' being no more than an abandoned room with an old poster of a beach somewhere clinging sadly to one wall. I was a little bit indecisive about what to do when I spotted an American girl pointing at a map and asking directions in broken Spanish from a disinterested shop-keeper. I went and looked over her shoulder and we decided to try and negotiate Santander together.

She was going to be living in Santander for six months or so on some kind of exchange programme. After about an hour, during which the map and our accumulated guidebooks were rendered pretty much useless, we found a pension called 'Hostal Ipanema' on the third floor of an otherwise unoccupied building. It has big old rooms and lots of spooky Catholic icons everywhere - very Spanish.

Kandie and I went for a wander around Santander, which at this time of day (around 2.30pm) was deserted, everyone of course being off on their siesta. It is quite an interesting town, moreso in appearance than in attractions, with lots of narrow streets with struggling ramshackle shops on either side, unsmiling people scurrying around and, of course, everything is in Spanish.

I was glad to have Kandie with me as she spoke enough Spanish to ask directions and how much a can of Coke was. After I had a shower back at the pension, we took off in search of some food. We started off with noble intentions of finding a charming little Spanish restaurant but ended up eating pizza at a semi-fast food place with some Poms who had been similarly unadventurous.