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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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Saturday I went with the UIMP university and the students from DU to two small pueblos - Comillas and Santillana del Mar. Both were very small and old towns with brick paved roads and buildings from the 15th centuries and on. In the first one (Santillana del Mar) we took a tour of an amazing cathedral that is still used for service on Sundays. There was a courtyard outside of the entrance with pillars surrounding it. Each pillar has an individual carving, each with its own story and meaning. It was absolutely gorgeous. After leaving the church we had time to explore the streets and shops. A friend, Jessica, and I stopped in one shop and I bought two pillowcases that were made in Valencia. The ladies that were working were so nice and spoke Spanish that we could completely understand. We started conversing about Barcelona and how the parents there are only allowing their children to learn and speak Catalan, creating a problem for them in the future since the only people who know and speak it live in Cataluña. They talked with us for over 30 minutes so we were unable to look at other shops. The streets there are so narrow that it is amazing a car or van can fit. When we were walking down them in a group of about 40 people and a car had to drive through we could literally touch the car passing by when standing against the buildings.
After Santillana del Mar we took a bus to Comillas. There we only spent a little time walking around but we visited a house designed by Gaudi. His work is more common in Barcelona and the south but we were able to see one here too. There were small kitchen-like tiles with sunflowers all over the house and even fencing, very intricate. After that we had a few minutes to shop around before returning to Santander.
For la comida I went with a few girls to a local restaurante for the "menu del día." For 9€ I had this potato soup dish with sausage, albóndigas en salsa (meatballs in a sauce, it was like beef stew without much stew), a coffee for dessert, and that includes bread and wine. This is how the normal lunch is offered and it is called the menu del día. three courses including dessert or coffee, bread, wine or water.
For the evening we went to Pizza Hut- it was hilarious because here it is a formal sit-down restaurant where you even have wine with it. The pizza itself is way better than in the US. It was funny. After that we walked on the beach a bit and downtown in the center. Being Saturday night it was just starting to get busy there at about 1. Although it unfortunately started to rain; so we went to a discoteca, which played mostly music from the US. Although everyone dances to it I am pretty sure we are the only ones who really understand it. The only thing I can't stand is how everyone smokes everywhere- so you always smell and afterwards your eyes are burning.
It also turned out that when a group of us from DU were sitting on the stairs in the centro with a group of locals, two pictures were taken for the Sunday newspaper front page. It is really funny, you can clearly see one of the girls from our group in both.
previous travel blog entry
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