Last Day in Santander

Saturday, May 13, 2017--Santander, Spain

All the places I have stayed in Spain so far, both apartments and hotel rooms, have had door knobs in the center of the door.  There really seems to be an obsession with them here.  These are not turning knobs which open the latch; they are just knobs for pushing or pulling the door.  To open a door, you turn the key in the lock on the side until it eventually pulls back the latch.  I understand that a center knob has a nice, symmetrical look to it, and I remember being fascinated by a modern house in the 1950s that was built with a center door knob.  But manipulating (opening or closing) a door with a center knob takes more effort than manipulating one with a knob to the side of the door that swings inward or outward.  Anyway, I am at the point of being curious now whether every door where I stay for the rest of the trip will have a center knob.

I found a REAL market today--the Mercado de la Esperanza.  It is a two-story market with the bottom floor being all fish stalls and the stop floor being mostly meat stalls with a couple of bakery stalls and a few fruits and vegetable stalls.  There are many more fruits and vegetable stalls outside on the grounds.  It was full of customers and exciting to watch.  I find it amazing that so many fish stalls can be loaded down with so much seafood and that it can all sell.  Even more amazing is that so many markets like this all around the world can have so much seafood for sale every day without depleting the supply of seafood in the oceans.  (Of course, I am a believer that they probably ARE depleting the suply of seafood.)

Since I went everywhere yesterday that I had planned to go today, I used today to research my route back to the bus station in advance of having to go there tomorrow morning.  I took the elevators up two streets across from my apartment.  That still left me short one street from where I needed to be.  But at the next intersection, it was only a short distance uphill to Calle Alta.  And from there, it was a gradual decline all the way to the station.  It's a much better route than backtracking the way that Google Maps showed me how to get from there to here.

Once I was at the station, I explored the area.  Santander has a small train station with only a few trains a day--to Vallodolid and to Madrid for the most part.  Nearby, was a huge 3-story Zara store under construction.  (Zara is a Spanish brand that competes with H&M from Sweden to bring the cheapest rip-offs of the current designer styles as quickly as possible to the public.)  I went by the City Hall where there I had seen multiple basketball courts being set up yesterday.  Many people were playing basketball--some actually being two competing teams and others just having shooting competitions.  It was after that, as I chose a back road higher up the hills to return to my part of town where I came across the market.

Back near my place, I looked for the bullring which I had seen on the map as being near the small neighborhood market I found a few days ago.  It was right beside it, but from there it looks like such a small building that it doesn't even look like a bullring.  The key that I was actually looking at one was a door that had the word "sol" on it implying that it lead to seats on the sunny side of the ring.

I sat in the median of our boulevard to read for a while.  A very nice lady came by talking while handing me a brochure.  I told her I do not speak Spanish.  She said something like, "No es necesario.  Internet.  Internet aqui."  And she pointed to a web address:  www.jw.org.  That's when I realized she was a Jehovah's Witness.

It was actually getting warm outside since I was wearing a long sleeve knit shirt.  So I returned to the apartment to handle things I needed to do in advance of tomorrow:  Contact the owner of the apartment in Bilbao to assure him I would be coming.  Download the photos that I have taken so far so that a new batch can be started that will be the ones shared by Wes and me.  Read the literature I have for Bilbao to be ready for arriving there tomorrow and will know what is worth exploring it over the next few days, etc.

I had more pork chops with onions and potatoes tonight.  I meant to make a pasta and mix the chopped pork chops into the spaghetti.  But instead, I repeated what I had last night.  Otherwise, I would have needed to eat the potatoes and onions tomorrow morning for breakfast, and I am not really going to have enough time to fry them, eat them, and clean up before I have to leave for the station. 

I don't know if Wes is going to make it to Bilbao tomorrow.  His flight left Nashville later than scheduled and arrived in Charlotte only at 14:05.  His connecting flight from there to Boston left at 14:38.  It meant he would have had to get off the plane and get from gate C9 to gate B4 within a very short period of time.  The door for the second flight was probably closed around 14:30 if not earlier.  I hope it made it, because if he did, there will be plenty of time in Boston before his flight leaves there.  But if he didn't make it, the next flight from Charlotte to Boston will have him arriving AFTER his next flight from Boston to London Heathrow has already departed.