Cantabria! (North of Spain)

What an unbelievable country.  Last week was pretty much a blur, we had our Spanish 400 exam on Thursday, which culminated our intensive, 8 day, 4 hour per day class to get us accustomed to speaking Spanish 24/7.  The exam could have probably gone better, but it definitely could have gone worse, we had almost 200 vocab words to retain in 8 days!  It was A LOT of work, I just choose not to write about it, because it’s not all that exciting.  Tuesday and Wed of last week we had a cooking class, which was pretty neat.  Funny enough, we went to the University of Salamanca dorm cafeteria, and the same company that cooked for JMU, Aramark, cooked for Unirsidad de Salamanca as well!  So we went back into the kitchen and watched/helped the chef prepare traditional dishes such as Gaspacho, Tortialla de Patatas, and Paella.  

We all looked dashing

My favorite was learning how to cook the Paella, which I will definitely do, but it is a very work intensive dish, you have to be paying attention and know what you’re doing to cook it well.  The tortilla de patatas is a great snack too – it’s sautéed potatoes and onions, mixed in with beat eggs and you fry it up like a omelet pizza almost, it’s a very common dish in Spain, I would liken it to a club sub in the states.

Our trip to the Cantabria region, in the north of Spain, was pretty unreal.  We left at 6:45 AM, ehhh it was quite early.  Passed out on the bus until we stopped for breakfast at this little place off the highway, got a doughnut and a glass of fresh squeezed OJ (everywhere has those machines where you put in the oranges and it juices them right in front of you, they rock).  The first stop was at the Prehistoric caves of Altimira in Castillo de Puente Viesgo.  Talk about old, these caves were as old as old gets, Neanderthals lived there!  We had a nice tour guide, but it was the first time any Spaniard has ever spoken too slow, he was speaking slower than grandma’s grandma.  He had some interesting stuff to say, and there were some really neat paintings of horses, bulls, and other animals in the caves done by using coal (black) and another mineral that they crushed up so as to form a red pigment.  Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures, because the flashes and whatever else happens when you take a picture wear on the prehistoric markings.  After hangin out with the Neanderthals, we got back onto the bus and headed to our hotel. 

Good thing we drove through the set for Lord of the Rings.  

The picture doesn't do it justice because some glare, but it was pretty sweet.

Our drive from Altimira to where our hotel was, was out of this world!  There were sheer rock faces like I had never seen.  I have seen the rockies, been out west and up north, even into Canada and these mountain faces were mesmerizing.  The pictures don’t even do it justice, there were lights glaring off of the glass and my camera is not the nicest.  On a side note, the bus rides are always actually pretty fun, either everyone is sleeping or just hangin out and talking, laughing and reminiscing on the previous nights antics.  For one reason or the other our conversation often turns to the culinary world, we love talking about food (preface).  Everyone was missing American food, and we started talking about steak, and everyone got soo hungry and wanted a steak!

So we arrive at our hotel in Santillana Del Mar, around 5pm, do some hiking, take a nap and head down to dinner.  PS – our hotel was nestled in between sheer rock faces in the European peaks, and it was SUPER nice.   

Casual hotel in the mountains, sorry this picture is crooked

The hotel we stayed in is called a Parador, which is a hotel run by the state. We were tired from hiking and caving, so we took our nap and got to dinner, with some nice bread and appetizers waiting for us.  Apparently God had been listening in on our conversation about food earlier, because for our main course, out comes a behemoth of a sirloin steak with sautéed potatoes on the side.  We had a party of 30, and there were 30 steaks cooked perfectly medium rare, just like Pops does it.  

I was so excited/ starving that I forgot to take a picture until I had already eaten half of it...whoops

Holy sweet lord, it was like having buffalo mash, rotisserie chicken, and grilled cheese Thursday all in one meal, but better.  From dinner we bought a few bottles of wine and everyone ended up in one hotel room just hanging out – one of my favorite nights yet.

Our weather for the weekend was pretty crappy, it rained every day and was overcast, but nothing could put a damper on what we did Saturday morning.  Right next to our hotel was a Gondola, which rode us up through the clouds to a peak.  

All of us thought we wouldn’t be able to see everything since it was overcast and nasty out, but little did we know it was sunny without a cloud in the sky when we got to the top.  The views are damn near impossible to put into words, it was like nothing I have ever seen.  

I have been up in the Rockies out west, up north to Vermont and into Canada all in the mountains, but these huge rock faces were absolutely unbelievable.  360 degree views that you could sit and look at literally all day long, we only had an our and a half and that time flew by.  We saw a mountain goat, and tanner, glenn, and I even walked through a little cave where it lived (thank God it wasn’t in there!)  Every different spot we hiked to brought out a new angle and different view, and it just never got old. 

After hiking we hopped on the bus and drove for a ways to this small town, where we stopped and got lunch – it was a dam good lunch!  We got a 30 € stipend for two lunches, so a few of us ventured off into town and spent 15 € for an appetizer, entre, dessert, bread, and glass of wine.  I got a shellfish soup to start, then went for the Lechazo, which is a baby lamb and finished off with Tarta de Abuela (grandma’s cake).  

Sopa de Mariscos.  I wash hoping for more shellfish, but the flavor was nice, nothing super special.

Super special baby lamb, it was bursting with hearty flavor.  Had to use my hands at the end, sorry Spain.

Grandma's cake! yum.

I’m glad we ventured into town a bit, when I’m looking for somewhere to eat, I usually just walk around until I find a place where it’s all locals, and this place didn’t disappoint, everything was delish.

After lunch, we hit the second cave of the day, there was a replica cave of the one which was discovered in the 1970s, the first cave dating to BC ever discovered.  It was pretty interesting, but the fact that it was a replica took away from it a little.  They have closed the real cave to the general public and reserved it for academia only, because of the huge amount of visitors that came in the 80s and 90s.  All the traffic raised the humidity and temperature of the cave, causing erosion of the rock and the invaluable paintings and markings on the walls.  There was an interactive museum right next to it where you could listen and watch all of these different tidbits about how these people before Christ lived.   Very interesting.  Once again, we were not allowed to take pictures, so sorry I don't have any to show!  The history nerd inside of me came out big time, I could have stayed in that interactive museum for a long time, but we only had like half an hour.  

When we got to our new, beachfront hotel in Santander, it was already like 8:00, so we ran out and found a grocery store and got some wine, showered, and headed to another awesome dinner.  We had this really good appetizer, which I’m still not sure what all was in it, some sort of fish encrusted in a flakey croissant type thing – whatever it was, it was freakin good.  Then we got our main course of pot roast, it was very rich and hardy, and it came with a bunch of veggies too – Jesús gets an A+ for the meals this past weekend.  

Awesome Appetizer, anyone's guess as to what it was, but it was on point

After dinner some people went out, but me and a few others just walked down to the beach and sat on the beach with pants and a sweatshirt on and drank some wine, it was very relaxing.

beach crew

  Sunday was nothing to write home about, another crappy day of weather so the beach got rained out, and we just headed back to Salamanca a little early after stopping for lunch in this little city called Burgos, nothing special there.