The dock of the bay

Soundtrack.

Today we decided to take the bus to Santander. When we got there it was raining so torrentially that almost the first thing we did, after taking shelter in a bar for coffee and pastries, was to buy an umbrella -- a very fine spotted one costing only 9 euros. Guess what, we didn't get rained on for the rest of the day. But we would have done if we hadn't bought the brolly.

I can't say Santander has that much to recommend it, certainly compared to Bilbao. Between rain showers and sunny periods, we visited two excellent bookshops where S bought a book about bears and I bought some novels. S had also identified a map shop on the Internet; it was hidden inside a government building, which meant that to get in you had to show ID and go through a metal detector watched by a very grumpy looking armed guard. Once in, it was S's idea of paradise -- more maps than you could shake a walking pole at, and the young lady spent ages helping him identify the right maps for a request one of his walking friends had made. Not easy since he didn't know exactly where the peaks she is planning to scale are. But the four large-scale maps he ended up with were a snip at just 3.50 each.

To avoid getting rained on, we picked a restaurant just down the road from the map shop for lunch. Despite being number 1 on TripAdvisor, it was nothing to write home about, but it was good enough. The sun had come out by then, so we took a long walk along the sea front to the Maritime Museum. It has an aquarium in it -- hurrah! -- but not a very spectacular one, and in general the exhibits were underwhelming. It was after eight by the time we got back, and we were more than happy to stay in and dine on scrambled egg on toast, rather than going out again. So that means you get the seafront in Santander instead of a night shot of the church in Castro.