Most of the day was at sea, and after a late and lazy start I did a little bit of Spanish, Paul bought some ear plugs and we pottered about unconstructively. The weather forecast for Spain was looking a bit depressing but as we arrived the cloud parted and a bit of sun peeked through encouragingly. We drove to our hotel (the nh hotel santander)...I started off in spanish but clearly wasn't worth replying to in anything other then english. Hey ho. The room is quite nice but the bike's accommodation in their subterranean garage is nearly as expensive and you have to get a new password every 30 mins to use their wifi (lobby only). Still the weather was looking ok so we went out to stretch our legs and came across preparations for some kind of religious activity so waited around and took photos. It turned out to be a surreal easter procession of people carrying effigies and playing shrill brass band tunes while wearing masks and pointy hats and looking creepily like members of the ku klux clan. They processed right though the town and after a while we left them for my first taste of el vivo de noche espagñol. That is probably not really spanish. In the first bar we had vinos and as paul predicted also got a snackette on a toothpick each (raciones em pinchitos). Once we had got into the swing of things we moved on to another bar in an undercover shopping/bar area where the raciones were more ambitious (and not free). Vino tinto gets you a rioja and vino blanco gets you a wine from rueda, and all of it is really cheap, only €1-2 euros a glass. We made the mistake of moving on again to a more modern looking bar which turned out to have rubbishy wines and bocaditos...we should have stayed put! Then time to nest and hope for good weather tomorrow, and think what on earth we will do if it's ready bad.
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