Weekend at the Beach

This weekend was glorious! I am now starting to realize how much I will miss Spain when I leave in a little over a week. I could easily stay longer. 

This past weekend was a little vacation with our whole group to Santander. But on the way to our destination, we stopped in Burgos to see what else? A cathedral! Burgos does happen to be the birthplace of both Paquita and Luis. Very exciting for Robyn and I. Other than that, the cathedral is pretty much the most interesting thing in the city. The cathedral was pretty nice and had a museum in the bottom that was interesting to see. 

This little man moves and chimes a bell at every hour I think. He was kinda creepy looking, but you can't really see it in the picture. 

Cool staircase in the cathedral

This room contained lots of pictures of past bishops and priests and I thought it looked like something out of Harry Potter. haha!

After that stop, we made it to Santander, which is famous for its somewhat cooler weather and BEACHES! And our hotel just happened to be right on the beach! I loved this city! We realized pretty soon that this city is like the Hamptons of Spain. I half expected to see the Barefoot Contessa walking down the streets with her baguette in arm. Our teacher said that this city serves mainly as an oasis for wealthy spaniards. The elite like to spend their summers here because it has cooler weather than the rest of the country and it is absolutely beautiful! I do have to say, this weekend was the first time I felt that I did not have to worry about watching my purse! A huge relief after having to constantly watching your bag in Madrid. 

This is the view from our balcony and where we spent most of our day. 

We got there in the evening and had just enough time to go out to eat, explore the downtown area of the city and head back for a relaxing evening in the hotel. The next morning we woke up early to eat breakfast and hit the beach! We threw on our swimsuits, bought some towels, and set up camp.

This was hilarious. Mark decided to play his guitar and ended up drawing a crowd of teenage Spaniards. They loved him and kept requesting songs for him to play. Classic beach scene like something from a movie. 

We ended up getting lessons of how to body surf from some of those guys and I had just about the best time ever despite the fact that on one of the waves I thought I was literally going to die because I got sucked under and swallowed about a gallon of salt water! The waves were huge so it made it all the more fun! But note to self: next time I attempt to body surf, I will remember to bring a swimsuit that likes to stay on my body better. Provided for some awkward instances. Don't really want to talk about it anymore...

After getting more than enough sun, we headed back for some shopping, only to realize that all the stores were extremely expensive. Like if you found something under 100 euros, you were doing good! We basically just ate dinner that night and went to bed early again, feeling the pain of the sun from earlier.

 

This is a picture of the downtown area right on the beach! So pretty!

Beach trip was over and that next morning we hopped back on the bus, only making one big stop in Bilbao. That was such a great stop because it contained the Guggenheim museum. So cool! One of my favorite buildings I have ever seen. It was designed by architect Frank Gehry and absolutely amazing! He was inspired by fish and the water so the whole outside looked very similar to scales on a fish. Everything in the whole building except the floors were curvy lines. I couldn't contain myself, I kept wanting to take pictures and more pictures and more pictures...

Basically a huge puppy dog made out of flowers. Like it dad? 

Amy and I were inspired by the water and felt the need to recreate that scene from Titanic, if you can't tell. I bet the locals loved that! Crazy americans!

Observation #4: You know how I mentioned on an earlier post that some spanish guys called us by saying "here Kitty, Kitty." Turns out thats not what we were saying. We mentioned that to one of our younger teachers, and she informed us that they were really saying something like "here giddys, giddys," which means hey white girls in Spanish slang. Good thing that got cleared up!

I leave with a shoutout to Jim Lockhart and all the other dad's reading this because it is now Father's Day. So happy fathers day dad! Hope its the greatest! I love you! 

Maria