Author: Wynette Richards

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?

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.”

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.

As mentioned in other posts today, we took the ferry (barca) into Santander. There was a boat driver who we never saw and a young woman who did everything else: guided the boat driver as he “parked” the boat next to the landing area, helped people disembark and embark, took tickets, even swept the boat during the ride over. She was so pretty and cheerful.

Today we walked from the tiny town of San Miguel de Meruelo to another not quite as tiny but still small town of Galizano. Walking on roads the whole way. More up and down than yesterday but not bad. We walked a total of 8.5 miles but that includes walk to restaurant and back after leaving our packs at the hotel. Elevation gain and loss was 600 feet up and 594 down.

The roads mostly didn’t have shoulders but very little traffic. Photos below show typical road and that it was a bright sunny day.

I still couldn’t talk Charlie into wearing his hi-viz wear. I decided to make mine look like a vest in front.

Google said Bar Luis would be right on our path. They’d open at 10:00, not long before we’d get there. Google didn’t show any other bars open. But Bar Luis sounded perfect. We got there and found a sign that said “Closed until May 3.”

But, we didn’t have to eat raisins and walnuts and caffeine pills for breakfast because Google was also wrong about there being another bar — very near this one, and it was open. It was a modern, fancy place. They didn’t hesitate a second when we asked if they’d make us eggs and toast and coffee.

We didn’t specifically ask for butter and jam with our toast and they served the toast with olive oil and tomato sauce. Very common here. That’s how we ate it. Tasty.

Twice so far on this trip we’ve been asked if we wanted large coffees. We said yes this time. They were HUGE. Largest we’d ever seen. Charlie likes the large ones. Next time I’ll stay with “regular”.