After collected all bus and train schedules that I need for my Cantabria trip, I successfully managed to find the optimal itinerary (after implemented all the methods I knew :-P, but seriously it took quite some time to get the solution given that I only had one day). The plan was to take train to San Vincente de la Barquera (in the direction to Oviedo, which was recommended by LP as the scenic train along the Cantabria-Asturia region), spent some time there and take bus to Comillas before return to Santander to take another bus to Bilbao (since I have booked a hostel in Bilbao that night).
I started the day around 9am to catch the train to San Vincente de la Barquerra, it was indeed a scenic train trip, made me feel like I was in Scotland, was not a long trip though, only around 1.5 hrs. I should try the whole route to Oviedo someday :-P What surprised me was the San Vincente's train station is very small and it is located somehow in the middle of nowhere. I could not imagine if I arrived there when it's dark already :-P.. It was good thing that there were 2 more people stop at the station so I could follow them to the town center. I imagined that San Vincente is a bigger town with a lot of tourists..that's why I really made sure several time that the name of the train stop was really the town that I intended to go, and it was indeed the right one :-P The train station is a bit far away from the town center, it took me around 15 mins walk to reach the center. I went to the town hall and the castle but found that it was closed at that day :-( I found the Tourist Information Center to get more info on what else I could see (and to make sure where is the location of the bus to Comillas). Then I walked to the direction of the port with its colorful boats. It was really warm around 21C, but it did not stop me to enjoy San Vincente.
I planned to take the bus at 15:15 to Comillas and decided to have a real lunch (seafood Paella...a huge one.. that's it :-P). I was at the bus station around 15:05 and there were nobody there except some people at the bar, no sign that there will be bus departing in 10mins and I know that San Vincente is the starting point of the route. I was waiting...until 15:15 and still there was still no sign and I started to get worry.. I decided to ask people at the bar and found out that nobody could speak English :-( So I tried my best to use any possible communication tool, I pointed my schedule and one guy and the waitress tried to explain me something....but I did not get it. They told me (or actually they wrote me the time)the next bus would be at 17:00. I asked them if I could go by taxi there, since Comillas is actually about 10 mins trip from San Vincente. But they told me it will be expensive and he started to draw something which finally got me. There was a construction on the way from San Vincente to Comillas, so they have to use another way which took another 15 mins or so... and that what happened with the bus schedule, they made the departure time 15 mins earlier so that they could catch up the next schedule at the other towns.... Hwaaa I finally got that (I saw the sign of 15 mins blablabla at the bus...but since I did not have any problem with the schedule previously so I did not really care about it :-P). That was a short version of how I finally understood the problem, the real one was a bit...hmm painful :-P. Well so I gave up the idea to visit Comillas (and visiting one of Gaudi's) which gives me another reason to visit this area again :-).
At the end of the day I made it to Bilbao....was quite late but it was a good time to go directly to bed :-)
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