La Primera Noche

A typical street in downtown Santander.
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I arrived to Santander to meet the people I will be staying with for the month I am here. It turns out that I only stay with one 25 year old lady named Aila; her parents are living in the Mountains running a bar there. The apartment is on the first floor but in Spain the first floor is never actually on the bottom, so although I push "1" in the elevator, it is up 3 floors. Aila is rather nice and drove me up the block so I can get settled. Although as soon as she was done showing me around she said she is going out with her friends and will be back sometime before 6am. This was at 10:30pm. So, I decided to shower and go out as well for the first night on the town. I went with a girl named Jessica who is a friend of mine from DU. We went looking around the "Centro" or downtown of Santander for a place to eat something and try the sangria. We left at 12 and it was packed downtown with children in strollers to grandparents smoking and drinking but not eating. We soon figured out how spanish restaurants work because we would ask for a table and then other people would just sit down at a dirty table and wait for a waiter to clean it off. So we did that but then nobody helped us. The tables around us had not received service either so at least it was not because we are American. After 20 minutes or so of no help at all we decided to try another location. There we sat and were served right away because it was less crowded. I asked for tapas to go with the sangria we ordered since I had only eaten a club sandwich since my trans-Atlantic flight and he brought chocolate covered nuts, roasted nuts, and small candies similar to dots. SO, we basically ate all of them since it wasn't much and drank the sangria and took a cab home at about 2:30. Even then we felt like "grandparents" since we were the only people going home then. Although it was a Saturday night so that is expected. The sangria was amazing by the way- like fruit punch and actually had a fruit cocktail in the bottom of it along with the normal fruit. Although I did miss everyone at home it was a good first experience in Spain.