Month: April 2024

I snapped the above photo this morning as we were walking from our hotel to the train station. Note that it’s called a “cafe” and not a “bar”. But it is pretty much identical, I think. There is still plenty of liquor behind the counter.

Above is the cafe/bar where we hung out yesterday afternoon in Santander. Again, it’s called a “cafe” on the outside but note the inside. Pretty much a typical bar.

Of course we go to Spanish bars for the coffee and sometimes for a snack or even a meal. And they are open family places. You often see families with children. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a Spanish person drunk. I think it’s really frowned on to be drunk in public here. Of course, wine is served with every meal and included at no extra charge in the menus del dia.

It seemed like we saw a lot more bars in Santander that were called “cafes”. I wonder if that is a trend all over Spain?

We are fond of the cafe con leche in Spain. In Italy having coffee with milk after breakfast marks you as a child or a tourist. In Spain there is some of that but it is not as strong.

In Basque Country you just order a cafe con leche and that’s that. As soon as we got into Cantabria they started asking if we wanted a regular or a grande. We noticed that on other Caminos as well, part-way through they started asking.

We have started a ritual where we go out around four of five and settle into a bar, grab a table and do our daily blogging. That is too late for coffee for us so we get decafs. Every time the decafs have been very good, as good as any of the regular coffees we have gotten. Of course, we are coffee heretics anyway what with the milk we use, so don’t listen to us.

Also, once we got into Cantabria, we started getting cafes in glasses instead of cups. In one place only the grandes were in glasses. This works unless the coffee is very hot. We like these regional differences.

Another thing we like is that every bar is unique, there do not seem to be any chains. No doubt private capital will swoop in soon and ruin that.

Train stops missed: 1
Kind Spanish women who tried to help the rookies but was a few seconds too late: 1
Miles: 7.1
Rain: a little but we were already inside
Early morning walks through Santander: 1
Hot and cold pipelines wondered about: 1

As careful readers of this blog know, we are “short-haul” pilgrims who like to walk 7-9 miles a day rather than the 15-20 miles a day that the young whippersnappers like to do. This means we have to plan more to make sure we have enough stops. One solution is to plan a longer leg but take a taxi the first few miles to cut the daily walk down the WynChar size. We did this for today’s walk.

Since we like trains better than taxis we found the perfect train leaving at 7:50. We walked the half mile to the train station around 7:15, right at sunrise. The streets were mostly empty. First we went into the wrong train station, the one for longer distance trains. The local trains were next door. These are really more like metros and we got tickets from a machine and tapped our tickets to get through the turnstiles.

The train left at exactly 7:50 and arrived at the stop exactly at the scheduled 8:15. The train stopped and we were at the door ready to alight. But the door didn’t open. Turns out they only open when you push the button, which we didn’t find in time. A kindly Spanish woman saw these naive innocents stand at the door and rushed over to push the green button but was a few seconds late. The yellow blinking light indicated the train was leaving WITH us.

So, on to the next station, 2-3 miles down the line, where we got off. What to do? We were only 5 miles from our hotel, short even for us. We caught the Camino and decided to walk a mile in reverse and then back. Kind of a weird complete-ism for short-haul pilgrims but we were rattled and didn’t think everything through.

We felt kind of funny walking the “wrong” way. The Spanish people are always being helpful if we miss a turn or are off the Camino. Sometimes they are right and sometimes we have to explain that we are going to a bar or a hotel. Today was no exception. We were walking along and two guys in hi-viz jackets told us we were going the wrong way. Wynette told them we were doing it on purpose and they asked why. She just said it was a long story. (Wynette added: they had the nicest smiles and were laughing with us about us going backwards.) Afterwards we thought we might have explained that we missed a train stop but that really doesn’t explain it without more details.

This is kind of like when a Spanish person stops to chat, which happens often, and asks if we are going to Santiago. We’re not, but we always say yes, it’s easier than a long explanation about our half-caminos.

So, up a mile and back, we still got to the hotel at 11:45 but the room was ready even though check-in time was hours later. Rest, then lunch at the hotel which is also a slightly upscale restaurant. Now we’re down in the bar, a happening place.

On our extra back and forth walk, the path had a pipeline, actually two, beside it. We felt it, not sure why we decided to feel it, and it was hot. The other one was cold. A mystery. We have no idea what was in the pipes. Would like to know.

It’s cold and windy and rainy-ish outside, so we were glad our hotel was so all-purpose today. Nice restaurant, nice bar, nice room. Hotel Cueli in Viveda. Nothing much to explore in Viveda anyway. So, once we stepped through the hotel door, we had no plans to step out until tomorrow morning.

We haven’t posted a menu lately so thought I’d post about that. Our hotel had a nice menu del dia. (We decided not to try the €66 tasting menu.)

The paella was tasty. The broccoli was cooked more than we liked but didn’t taste too bad and we felt virtuous getting some vegetables. We liked the grilled fish (ojito). We were disappointed with the chicken with Roquefort sauce. Carrot cake was yummy. Charlie liked his dessert: cheese with quince jelly.

We are in the large bar of our hotel (Hotel Cueli) in Viveda. I just counted. There are 33 men in here. I’m the only woman. Most of the men are at tables of 4 or 5 playing some kind of card game. This is clearly a local hang out for the jubilantes (retired guys). It’s neat.

After my dad retired, he liked to go down to the McDonalds in Hobbs and meet up with his friends. And my granddad used to go down to the service station in Dora, NM, and play dominoes with his friends.

In the afternoons, Charlie and I’ve enjoyed lately finding a local bar in whatever town we are in and ordering a decaf and blogging, answering email, planning next stage, etc. It’s a nice way to be a part of things.

We’ve almost always found the laundries in Spain to be spotlessly clean and well-appointed with good baskets, tables, coin-exchange machines. We did the laundry a few days ago in Portugalete and to our surprise it was really dirty and no coin machine. Even stuff on the floor you could trip over. We didn’t want walk to a further one in the rain so we went ahead and used the creepy one.

Today, the laundry here in Santander was back to the good standards. As soon as we took our clothes out of the dryer, the properietor came out and started cleaning the outside and inside of the dryer. Later I noticed a sign that said: “The machines are disinfected after each wash.” (Top right sign below.) I imagine that is something left over from covid.

Now for the “coffee” part of the story. There was a bar next door. After we put the clothes in the dryer, we ran over and ordered two cafés con leche. We had planned to drink them quickly at the bar but I didn’t feel comfortable leaving the clothes for long so asked the bar tender if we could take the cups next door and she gave me a big smile and said “claro que sí” (“of course!”). And, of course, we hadn’t paid for them yet — you do that when you are done with the coffee.

Astute readers may have noticed the sign at the bottom right of the top photo that one might interpret as “no food or drink” but (1) we hadn’t noticed that sign till we’d already brought in the coffee and (2) Charlie, the sign expert, said that it meant “no hamburgers and coke.”

They used to say about the Camino that “cash is king” because few places took tarjetas. But the pandemic and technology changed that. Touchless was in. We had about €280 in cash from our last trip and now, after two weeks, that is getting low. The exchange rate, which becomes relevant later, in the rant part, is about $1.07 per euro.

We pay for just about everything with Apple Pay. It is very convenient and we have an easy way to look at a record of everything we spend. Our pizza dinner was one of the few meals that required cash.

Anyway, time to get more cash. We chose a bank ATM that doesn’t charge a fee. After you ask for an amount, in our case €300, they ask if you want them to convert it or have your home bank do it. I have blogged about this before also, always have your bank do it. They offered a rate of 0.8455 euros per dollar. Actually it has four more decimal places, presumably to give you some feeling of exactitude. A quick calculation revealed how bad this was. They wanted $354 for €300. I tapped the button for no conversion. Then they did something I had not seen before. They asked again, saying are you sure you don’t want us to convert it for you. You can count on our rate but you don’t know what kind of rate you bank might give you. I declined again. We got the cash and the email from the bank in about three seconds. They charged us $320 for €300, a little better than the rate of $1.07 that google said of the going rate. That was the highest markup I have seen on any cash machine.

Chinese food lunches: 1
China store purchases: 2
Cities we stayed in all day taking a break: 1, Santander
Beautiful markets visited: 1, see post
Cash machines used requiring a rant: 1, see post

We love Spanish food but when we are in bigger cities we like to see their take on other country’s cuisines. Yesterday it was Mexican and it was very good. Today we tried a traditional looking Chinese place. It was also very good, lighter than most Chinese food in the US. The owner (at least she seemed to be in charge, the place was called “Restaurante Mr Wang”) was friendly and laughed a lot. She has been in Spain for 41 years. We wanted to try things so ordered too much and only ate about half the food. No problem, we had just been to a China store and had some Tupperware-like containers that we got for other purposes (to replace our trusty bowls we use for breakfasts). She thought that was great and even washed them out for us. So Chinese food for dinner also. Everyone in the place seemed happy and smiled a lot. I imagine living in Spain is way, way better than living in China.

We have talked about China stores in previous blogs. They are an institution in Spain. Always run by actual Chinese people (it seems), they are kind of like old-time 5 and 10 cent stores with a little of everything. Lost your US to European plug converter? Go to a China store. Need a cheap bowl, go to a China store. Need warm slippers (which we did in A Coruña)? Go to a China store.

In Santander we saw, for the first time, China stores that also carried food like fruit and milk (which we need for our breakfasts). They don’t close during siesta so that’s handy for us and probably a number of locals as well.

This place was huge, like most China stores, and had many thousands of items, kind of like a hobby shop. I didn’t see any item that was out of stock. I was imagining the huge job it would to keep up with the stock and the ordering. I can’t imagine how they do it. As far as I know each store is independent so they don’t share stock and ordering software.

We decided to stay two nights in Santander to get laundry done and do some regrouping and reserving ahead. The population is 172,000 but like all these cities the old-town part is small and walkable.

We decided to stay in Santander for two nights. It’s the last big city we’ll come to on this trip (the first two being San Sebastian and Bilbao). It’s nice to have a day puttering around the city and catching up on few things like doing the laundry. Our hotel is very central so lots of great restaurants and bars and markets and people socializing in the streets.

The big central market of Santander is a block or so from our hotel. They are open 8 to 2 every day except Sunday. It is a huge market selling fresh fruit and vegetables, meat, cheese, bread, etc. Also an outdoor area selling cheap clothes and such. (I walked through that part briefly but quickly got claustrophobic.) The food part of the market was among the best we’ve seen in Spain. Unfortunately it was hard to just enjoy it. I kept wanting to hold on to it, take it home with me. Why don’t we have these great places in the States? Incredible fresh food for incredible prices. We have farmer’s markets but those can be expensive and only one day a week and only in season and much smaller.

We bought three things: some bread, some spanish seedless raisins (the seller said those are the best), and some fresh peas.