First weekend excusión: Cantabria. Which may as well mean—absolutely stunning. I’ve finally found my perfect destination-wedding location! ha (Although I have yet to see Greece.)
Little history lesson: Located up in the center of the Northern coast of Spain, Cantabria is a state which was invaded centuries ago by the English. Thus, many English influences such as churches, architecture.. etc. It is separated into two areas by the tallest mountain range in Spain which made it a very safe haven for the English as far as natural barriers go…thus; it has the “best of both worlds”—lush mountains, and beautiful beaches.
We left Saturday morning from Salamanca before the sun even rose, and traveled north to La Cueva de Puente Viesgo where there are clear traces people from the Paleolithic era. There were drawings of animals and hand prints of the people who once resided in the cave. Despues, we arrived at Los Picos de Europa and checked into our hotel that literally smelled like fresh lavender—it was awesome (I wish I could think of more adjectives to describe it, but I’ve found myself running low on English words lately.) Our hotel resided at the bottom of the valley in the center of the tallest mountain peaks in Spain. So peaceful and so green. A few of us went out on a hike with our complimentary hiking sticks from the hotel.. there was even a short one in our room for little ‘ol me... how lucky! (too bad we didn’t get to keep them)—-- we only hiked about 1/10 of the way up before we were so tired that we couldn’t walk up any further. Two hours later and back down to the hotel it was time for group dinner. Afterwards the night festivities began….... wedding crashing anyone? ;-) . There was a second group at the hotel that night, about double the size of ours—a wedding party. We were all hanging out at the bar and decided to ask about the wedding etc etc. This one guy named Antonio ultimately invited 13 of us to hop on their tour bus to go to a club in the town about 30 miles down the mountain. …….
Reasons why this was sketchy:
1. We had no idea where we were within Cantabria.
2. We didn’t know any of these people minus ourselves…they were all Spanish.
3. The bus was leaving the town at 4:30am to get back to the hotel, so if you missed the bus you were left behind.
4. If someone did miss the bus, none of us knew the name of our luxurious hotel…and still don’t know the name soooo I think that speaks for itself. I know, we’re dumb.
5.Mind you it was 1am or so, and we all had a few glasses of wine, so to us this sounded like a fabulous idea. After all, how many times do you get to crash a Spanish wedding in the middle of Cantabria?
So.. what happened? Us silly Americans wasted no time contemplating any of those sketchy possibilities and hoped on this bus. We arrived in a town where there was a huge carnival going on, followed the wedding party to a discolteca, danced the night away with everyone—including the bride and groom— I was asked by Marcus, to be married, on multiple accounts –another story, and finally at 4:30, thankfully all of us made it back, and jumped back on the bus and made it safely to our hotel. Talk about an adrenaline rush… it gets better.
Sunday morning: Gondola ride up to the peaks of Los Picos. Gorgeous, gorgeous gorgeous. There’s no other way to put it. Half of us at a time got into a little glass elevator that hoisted us up about 2 miles to los picos via ONE steel wire. Phew. The top= breathtaking. Everyone went off to his/her respective plot of the top. I went on my own for a while just to sit, ponder… life, love, happiness and all that good stuff. I really just wished that I could have had all of my family and friends whom I love the most there with me. For the most part it was so silent and just so so beautiful. It sounds cliché, but I felt like an ant. The mountains were so big—millions of years old, and I was so small—and only 20. If anyone reading this ever gets the opportunity to go to Spain, this is one thing you must see and experience—(and if you ask me to come, I’m there!) The air up there was clean, fresh, as if it had never been touched by man. On a cloudier day, we would have been up with the clouds, right in them. So cool to think about---there’s not much else I can say about that other than you really need to go see it all for yourself.
Moving on, we made it back down the mountain via the same sketchy gondola ride (for the record the spanish call it gondola—not me—usually I think of Venice, Italy when I hear that—there was no water beneath this one, just air, greens, and rocks.) We went to a small town, Santillana, where some of the Englishmen first settled when they came to Spain. Also, we voluntarily ventured into a medival torture museum which I had to leave after looking at about 3 displays due to nausea and disturbing images. (which was not normal for me because I have a rough stomach when it comes to medical talk.) They were some extremely gruesome tortures—not for me. We left the town and headed to Santander aka. the beach of Cantabria. Checked into our hotel overlooking the water—and proceeded to do did the dinner thing. Ha… the dinner... Interesting and not my style to say the least. I’ll make this quick: 1. Mushroom soup (mom knows perri doesn’t like mushrooms unless they’re on pizza or hidden in Thanksgiving Day stuffing) 2. eggs with asparagus and unknown veggies which tasted, I kid you not, like cigarette smoke. 3. some kind of weird fishy fish, covered in more unknown fish, which we later came to the conclusion were small eels that looked like earth worms, but white and they were fish. I tried to eat the fish underneath the wormy things, took one bite.. and didn’t get any further. 4. Dessert, some dried bread covered with almonds. SO.. my dinner consisted of bread and olive oil and the almonds on top of my desert! (which I was fine with at the end because olive oil in Spain is DIVINE. Contrary to popular belief, Spain in the world’s largest producer of olive oil, not Italy.—yes, mama and didi, I will some back for you both!) After dinner, 5 of us went down to the beach to dip our feet in the water, then to bed.
Monday: well, first and foremost.. an awesome breakfast at the hotel to make up for the night before! then, a trip to El Palacio de Magdalena. Earlier when I said I’ve found the location of my future wedding.. this was it. A gorgeous palace at the far east side of the beach on top of a cliff. The palace itself we couldn’t go into because it’s now a University, but the exterior was gorgeous. Architecture modeled after the English, the perfect size, not too big, but still very palatial. A few hundred kilometers away there was a lighthouse that I think may still be in use. Moving on, it was tiempo libre (free time) a la playa! All of us, of course, had been taunted all morning by the beach so we went for it… paid 4 euro for lounging chairs since none of us had towels---about 12 of them--- and I barely got my money’s worth cause I jetted out straight for the waves. The tide was low and reallllly far out like the night before, so it was like a huge swimming pool that you could stand in, but in the ocean and obviously with waves. … the water was surprisingly verrrrry warm and very blue/white! Ultimately, love love loved it. I really wish we had more days there. I learned later in the day, (coincidently from Carlos, from the Spanish wedding party, who met up with us because he lives there, thanks to another girl from the group) that Santander is where many people retire and move to in Spain because of it’s serenity and beautiful beaches…. there’s something to think about. Eventually lunch time rolled around.. and after our not-so-great food experiences earlier on in the weekend, Jackie, Sarah and I opted out of the traditional food choices and found a Pizza Hut. Probably the best 15 euro I’ve spent in the last two weeks or so. Really. ……… Arrived back to Salamanca by 8:30ish, to find that it was the last day of Fiestas de Salamanca. Danielle and I went to the fireworks show down at el rio at 10:00, then went to La Plaza Mayor to see Conchita. For the record, she is my new favorite music artist. My best description would be……. Sara Bareilles—in Spanish. If you are into that kind of thing, I definitely recommend checking her music out!!!
Things I miss:
(Don’t judge me that most of its food.)
To-go coffee
Orbit in packs of 18 (here it’s .75 euro for 6 pieces.. which translates to mucho spending for Ms. gum-aholic here.)
Soft towels (as opposed to starchy ones that may as well be exfoliates for your cuerpo.)
Pizza (clearly, but I’m good in this dept. for a while)
BROCCOLI!
Grey’s & Sex in the City reruns (thank goodness I brought Buffy along)
Kashi.
… and my mama of coiiiise J
In other news:
--Last night I have my first Spanish dream. Actually, believe it or not, it was trilingual? hmm not quite sure how that happened. The dream consisted of pizza (there’s that food again!), stealing a dress from the mall (which I did return)—accidently, and going to grandma’s house somewhere in between….first English, then to Spanish, then Romanian which was all the gma and gpa, I just listened. So that was “Hui!” (Cool!)
--Classes started yesterday (Tuesday) So far, so good! I’ll give you a run down of my schedule soon.
--We’ve already been here 3 weeks.. time is moving wayyyyyyy too fast! ahhh
One last note: Two Spanish mix-ups that I must tell you before I forget. Last week, during our Intensivo class:
- Chewing gum in Spain is not something people do with an addictive nature.. como yo. So I got into a little tiff with my professor, during class, explaining to him that I don’t smoke like Spanish people do, but I chew gum incessantly because it is my form of ……. “satisfación oral”. Ha…what I MEANT to say was oral fixation. Needless to say... embarrassing.
- Same class, different day. Every morning we have Las noticias due, which basically means everyone finds something interesting in the news the night before to talk about for two minutes when class begins. Well it was my turn and I was trying to say something like “He was afraid.” or “Tuvó miedo.” but instead I said “Tuvó mierda.” which means…”He had shit.” Javier’s eyes got really wide until I laughed and probably turned bright red after realizing what I had said. Once again, very embarrassing… and funny.
