Camino del Norte 11 – Turret

No walking, just strolling.

It has been a very lazy day. Partly because Jennifer had hours of meetings this morning, and has more tonight, and partly because there isn’t a lot to see in Santander on a Monday.

We walked all the way along the foreshore. Santander bills itself as having the prettiest bay in Europe and its fine, but honestly I struggle with it being the best. The most exciting part of our morning was when our walk was interrupted by gunfire, which turned out to be coming from the Olympic shooting team training yard.

We had another very nice lunch, although thankfully not as huge as yesterday’s. Then, while Jennifer had a siesta in preparation for tonight, I dashed about going up things.

First was a funicular which you get to via a moving walkway and an escalator – so that’s a lot of mechanical climbing in a row. The funicular is really a public lift to save climbing three flights of stairs. It’s free, so hard to begrudge the lack of spectacular view from the top.

Then I dashed over to the other side of town – dashed because I was trying to avoid the forecast rain – to go up the Renzo Piano designed foreshore building that is one of Santander’s icons. Did that – best part was the lift that has a sliding musical scale playing as it ascends and descends.

And then it rained. So after Jennifer’s siesta we popped out to an old market around the corner for some pintxos/tapas. We are in a nether zone where they seem to co-exist. I like the move back to tapas where they are options that don’t come on a slice of bread.

Jennifer is off to bed so she can get up at 1am – she has her own room for tonight – so I’ve retreated to my turret room to write this. I’m hoping the forecast is accurate and the rain will stop by the time we start walking tomorrow.