Conquering the Bucket List, Cantabrian-Style

Okay, as promised, this is the post about how I got to check a major item off of my bucket list last weekend: I finally got to learn how to surf. ‘But Angela,’ you may think, ‘haven’t you been going to school in San Diego, five minutes from the beach, for a year and a half? Don’t people surf there?’ Yes, yes I have, and yes, yes they do. But for some reason or another, it just never worked out. I never had the right connections or the right opportunity, that’s my excuse. Lame I know. HOWEVER I couldn’t be happier that it worked out this way – saying that I got to learn how to surf in the Cantabrian Sea off of the northern coast of Spain is one of the coolest stories in my arsenal now.
So the way this all came about was an organized excursion by ISA to Santander, Spain. We took a bus to the city Friday afternoon and got into the city that evening. We tried to go out and see the city a little after dinner that night, but the main plaza was so far and we got kind of lost, and once we got there everything was really expensive and everyone was dressed really fancy. We felt out of place, so we hung out a while and went back. It turns out, in my opinion, that Santander is quite the swanky community. We saw a lot of gigantic, beautiful castle-esque houses (so different from every other Spanish city I’ve been to where it’s all apartments) and lots of Range Rovers (also odd for Spain where the cars are usually quite small), and everyone just exuded the air of wealth and class. It was an interesting experience, I kind of felt like I was somewhere other than Spain. It was a beautiful city and OF COURSE I’m glad I went, but it was a very different experience.

Told you it was beautiful. The weather was kind of bad all weekend, but it's okay. I still got gorgeous pictures and the experience of a lifetime. Yeah. No complaints.

So the next morning we got up early and found the docks where we took a ferry to Somo, where all of the surf schools are. We went to Cantabria Escuela de Surf – ISA had cut some kind of deal with them so we got wetsuits, boards and a lesson for half the regular price. So we all suited up and followed our instructor to the beach. He explained the basics to us (in Spanish of course) and we practiced standing up on our boards on the beach, but only twice. Then, to our surprise, he was like – okay, go surf. We were all kind of worried because it happened so fast, but we gave it a shot. The first time went quite terribly and we all just kind of…swam and flailed…so he called us into the shore to regroup. He gave us a few more tips and set us loose for round two. From there, we all just got in super-concentration mode, each of us in our own worlds, and did our best to remember the technique we had agonizingly studied for hours on end (not: more like 3 minutes) and not acquire any debilitating injuries. It was so much fun, I loved every second of it. I could not stop smiling, I probably looked like a fool but I couldn’t care less. It was perfect. It was actually an overcast, cloudy day, but that didn’t matter in the slightest, and the water was only chilly for about 5 seconds. I was euphoric, I just can’t emphasize how happy I was to be SURFING, finally!!

Oh before I post the pictures, I have a quick funny story about how I got them. We took pictures before we went out, while still at the surf shop, but we obviously weren’t going to bring our cameras to the beach, so we had all accepted we weren’t going to have pictures of us actually in the water surfing. Then when we were all standing around in a nice little group listening to our instructor give us the basics, I noticed this guy standing kind of at a distance from our group with a big black camera sneakily taking pictures of us. No one else in the group seemed to notice him, but I felt sketchy that he was lurking around and I didn’t know who he was. Apparently, what I thought was coming across as a quizzical, puzzled look actually came across as an ice-cold death glare, which this guy happened to capture. It turned out that there’s a photography business where the people come out and take pictures of people learning to surf to sell them to them after, which we learned later. But at the time, I didn’t know and it seemed sketch, my bad! We ended up buying the pictures because we were a big group and they cut us a really good deal, so that’s the story behind how I have all these pictures. So here they are, the professional ones are the ones in the water, the rest are the ones we took before and after ourselves. Brace yourself, because you might fall out of your chair laughing at my death glare picture. Enjoy!

There we were, on the beach, minding our own business and learning surf basics...

...and then I noticed this guy who I thought was creeping on our group, so I looked at him..uhm..quizzically, as if to say, 'oh hello, I wonder what that guy is doing over there.' But it accidentally translated to 'GET. AWAY. FROM. US. OR. PERISH.'

So anyways, that's that story. Here's the rest of the surf pictures.

Pre-surf.

giddy.

Post-surfing joy:

Spanish surf instructor is Spanish.

Happy happy joy joy.

So that was that! It was so awesome, I love love love loved it. The next day we left Santander. Before we left, we saw the palace on the peninsula, and we stopped off at a tiny little zoo, which had a few different animals, but most importantly, penguins.

How penguins can nail being classy AND adorable all at the same time is beyond me. They are the wonders of the animal kingdom.

After we left Santander the next day, we made quick stopovers in the small towns of Santillana del Mar and Comillas. Santillana del Mar was like a little medieval-feeling town:

Typical food of Cantabria - bizcocho y leche

After Santillana del Mar, we made a lunch stop in Comillas. The coolest thing we saw there was a house that Gaudi built, the only one not in Barcelona. This one was called "El Capricho de Gaudi" and it's based on the sunflower. So he designed it so that the sun comes into the right rooms at the right time of the day, kind of like the way a sunflower turns to the sun (the word for sunflower in Spanish is girasol- gira means to turn or rotate, and sol means sun). So like in the morning the sun streams through the breakfast room windows, in the afternoon through the living area, during siesta it shines into the bedroom so it's warm when the people sleep, etc. He also designed it to be a house for all the senses, so there's the light and color for sight, and I can't remember the rest of the senses, but the coolest part to me was that apparently music used to play when you opened the shutters. Gaudi was such a cool guy.

Some other pictures from Comillas.

That's it for that weekend. Next post is about a day trip we took to Segovia. The content likely won't be that exciting because there's really only 2 things to talk about. HOWEVER I was having a really artsy day and I took some really awesome pictures, so check back to look at those if nothing else.