Cantabria - Basque country: Day 1 and 2

I haven't decided to take this holiday until the last minutes but I have read some info about this area before. I like that kind of reading as you might know :-P To those who do not know Santander, it is one of the big cities in Cantabria region, a region in the north of Spain which famous of its spectacular coast line along the bay of Biscay. This area, I learned from several sources, is quite different from the other areas in Spain with its mountainous landscape. It's kind of coasts and mountains in the same area region.

I arrived in Santander quite late around 9pm, I have booked a pension close to the train station in Santander and I was so happy that I followed my intuition to buy a Spanish dictionary at the airport. The lady who welcomed me at the pension could not speak English at all, she knew that I could not speak Spanish (she asked me when I just arrived) but she continued to speak Spanish to me :-P I haven't been in Spain for quite some time (last time was my Segovia-Madrid-Seville-Granada-Algeciras-Barcelona trip in Dec 2005-Jan 2006...gosh 3 years ago...did not realize that) I forgot most of my basic Spanish for survival sentences :-P That lady tried to tell me something but I had no clue at all what she wanted to say and after saw my blank face she decided to grab someone who can speak English (and Spanish) as a translator. It turned out that she wanted to ask me whether I was happy with the room she showed me because otherwise there was a bigger room in different building :-P So much for my first day in Santander...lol..

The next day, I planned to go to Santillana del Mar and the famous Altamira cave. After checking the bus schedule, I found out that the earliest bus that day was at 11:30am (and I really had to be careful with the bus schedule since there are not so many departures...again it's quite an adventure to rely on public transportation). I spent some time to explore Santander that morning, strolling around its promenade and visiting its beautiful cathedral which really reminded me of a building in Oxford when you went inside.

I arrived in Santillana del Mar around noon and I knew from the tourist office in Santander that I had to go by foot or by taxi to reach Altamira cave museum from Santillana. At first I was really thinking about taking taxi (yeah it's holiday, wasn't it :-P) to save some time (quite a valid reason I would say..hehe) but I could not find a taxi there or actually I could not find the taxi driver (there was a taxi parked nearby the bus stop). So I had to walk...first of all I was not sure where to go, I had a map though but took some time to figure out the direction :-P The guy at the tourist office told me Altamira is about 2 kms from Santillana but he did not mention that it was uphill..it was noon, I had no lunch and it was quite warm (which was good but could be exhausting too). Thankfully the view was nice...though it was really only me who walked in the direction of the museum at that time :-P

Altamira museum was impressive...it made me think how's life 18000 years ago. It's a pity that we could not see the real caves but the museum was great (it was free of charge when I visited there). By the time I finished my museum tour I knew that I could not take the bus I planned to take to return to Santander. I arrived back in Santillana around 4pm and almost all the shops were closed for siesta, so I only walked around the scenic village. Santillana is beautiful village with its cobblestone street. I visited the roman Colegiata de Santa Juliana, a beautiful 12th century monastery which is the highlight of the village. I also visited the Museo Diocesano, another monastery at the other end of the village which I found had quite bizarre collection. First of all, I was the only visitor there and it was almost dark already when I was there and their cryptic collection (plus its two level wooden floor) did not really make me enjoying the moments I spent in that museum. But overall Santillana is pretty and I managed to catch the latest bus to Santander around 7pm...:-)

Cantabria and Basque country - Introduction

Haven't had time to update this blog with my latest trip in north Spain in March. Life has been busy lately, during the weekdays and weekends :-). Basically I lost my fight with my addiction (yeah traveling addict that's it). I should have been in a traveling fasting period but I could not stand for cheap flight deals, so somehow someday (in Feb I think) I found a cheap flight (2 cents for return trips) to Santander in northern Spain. I haven't been to the north of Spain before and to be honest I haven't heard about Santander before I knew those cheap flight deals, all I knew about north of Spain was Santiago des Campostela and Bilbao. I was interested when I found more information about the city and decided to book the flight...it was only 2 cents anyway that's after tax though I had to pay 10 EUR for my credit card charge....but still...it's a cheap deal (besides I did not know that charge until I saw the confirmation email :-P..and I could not imagine 2 cents charge on my credit card hehe).

Okay I booked those flights but I haven't decided to go at that time, sounds weird indeed but it happened :-P. I still had 2 days from my annual leave last year that I had to finish before the end of March so four day holiday (plus weekend) was a good option. But I was not sure to spend some money for my holiday (outside the 10.02 EUR that I have paid for my flight tickets) as I said I should have been in my traveling fasting period :-P.

My flight was on Saturday evening, March 7 and I finally decided to go when I woke up on that Saturday :-P I felt like I had to go to Spain that day...lol... so I just packed my stuff after that...and I did not really care about my battle with my traveling addiction (besides I have some friends who supported me with my 'go for holiday' decision :-P thanks guys!!).

Karneval and movies weekend

It was Karneval time again several days ago. This year I managed (finally) to see the Rosenmontagszug (the carnival parade) in Koeln, which is considered as the center of the Karneval celebration in Rheinland. It was my second Karneval in this area and last year I joined the celebration in Duesseldorf. I remembered watching the Rosenmontagszug in cold and rain for three hours with Yuko, see my previous post.

The big carnival celebration starts from Thursday before Ash Wednesday at 11:11. We had Berliner at the office as what we had last year and after office hours Luam, Andreas, and I went to the Altstadt (Old town) of Duesseldorf. A lot of people have started wearing their carnival costume since that Thursday and it was fun to see their creativity :-) We were in the Altstadt around 18:30 and the area was already full of (drunk) people...We only walked around the Altstadt for a while and decided to leave, was so d*mn cold that evening.

On Friday I decided to start my movie weekend, the Oscar award announcement was on Sunday evening (which was Monday early morning for us in Germany and we were free on Monday, a good chance to see it live on TV), so it's kind of good excuse to watch some good movies that were nominated for Oscar. I watched Frost/Nixon in the previous weekend and Milk on that Friday, then Benjamin Button on Saturday, and The Reader on Sunday (thanks to Fai).

Cyna and Irma - Cyna's friend joined me to see a small parade in Koenigsalle on Sunday afternoon. It was small parade but quite nice, a lot of people also some children with their carnival costumes (so cute). I invited Cyna and Irma to my apartment after walking along the Rhine and around Altstadt. Cyna baked a cake ;-) and I cooked Pecel or actually I pushed them to finish Pecel that I have cooked in the morning. After that, it was watching Oscar time with Cyna who stayed overnight at my apartment. I slept around 6am, Cyna has 'gone' before that :-P

We woke up around 9:30am (less than 4hrs sleep for me :-P) and then got ready for Koeln. We planned to take the train around 10:40 but did not make it because there was no tram to Hauptbahnhof (main station) from my apartment. Not really big deal actually...it was around 20 mins walking but the plan to be in Koeln before 12 was ruined :-P. Finally after a bit waiting time and standing all the way to Koeln (so crowded as it was expected), we reached Koeln around 13. Koeln was already full of people with costumes. It was difficult to find a place that still enabled us to really see the parade, but we found a spot not so far away from Koeln Dom together with two Indonesian friends of Cynara that we met accidentally.


I think the parade in Duesseldorf last year was even better or maybe because the financial crisis also affected the spending to decorate all the cars, have no idea. But sure being in Koeln in Rosenmontag was quite experience. The people were 'wilder' and they knew (at least the people around me) all the Koeln songs by heart and they danced too even we stood so close to each other (which made us join them) :-P The most interesting thing was the generosity of the sweet things that were thrown. It was not only small candies or chocolates, but they also 'thrown' us boxes of pralines. I got one small and one big boxes and also some candies and chocolates (see picture below). It made us a bit hesitate to leave the parade before it was over (hehe), but we decided to leave at 16:00. On the way to Hauptbahnhof, we met another friend of Cyna with her Brazilian group. We talked a bit and took picture with Brazilian flags (and accused to be Brazilian by one of her friend :-P)... Then.. we returned to Duess, still found no tram to our apartments, was quite a struggle indeed but we were happy we made it :-)