weekend in Santander

This weekend, some of the other Americans and I went to Santander. It’s a city on the north coast of Spain, on the beach of the Atlantic. It wasn’t a trip that was originally planned, but we had a free weekend so I planned it because nobody else was doing anything. I had my house mom call a hostel to book for us, then everyone who wanted to go paid me and we all went to the bus station to buy tickets to get there. Every city here, no matter how big, has a bus station to travel anywhere you want to go in Spain. It’s pretty convenient and a lot cheaper than flying. We paid 22 euro to go to Santander and back. The hostel we got was pretty nice too and it only cost each of us 26 euro per night. They had a shower and sink just out in the open in the room, and the toilet was communal. I was glad we had a shower and sink in each room so we didn’t have to fight over just one. The shower was a step in shower, kind of like the one I have in my basement at home, but it had an opaque part from your knees to your neck so no one could see that part of your body. It was kind of funny, because I was able to participate in a conversation going on in the room while I was in the shower.
Most of the time we spent there was at the beach. The beaches are beautiful with clean sand and clear water. They also had these little floating plastic islands in the ocean that you could swim to and sit on and tan, or jump off of into deeper water. It was a lot of fun swimming and playing on them. At a different beach, they had lots of pretty boulders and rocks to climb on in the water. At first, you could totally see all the rocks and we went climbing on them. Then, we stayed there so long that by the time we were leaving, all the rocks were covered except for a really tall one. The tide came really close to us. Of course while we were at the beach, we ate a lot of ice cream. I was excited about how tan I got too. At night, we went out for tapas and to the discotecas. Oh, and “discoteca” doesn’t mean you dance disco there or anything corny, it’s like the equivalent to a “club” in America. They don’t call them clubs here though because “club” means a place where you go buy a prostitute. There are only a few discotecas in Valladolid, but in Santander there were like a million. We found one we really liked and we made friends with a few girls from Miami and another girl from Spain who wanted to practice English.
It was a lot of fun to be with a bunch of my friends here and travel to a nice beach to relax for the weekend. This next weekend, I’ll be in Madrid! But tomorrow I’m going to Madrid too to see a futbol/soccer game. I’m pretty excited about that but I don’t know anything about that sport. I have to spend the night in Madrid because there aren’t any buses that will be leaving for how late the game goes. Then, we have to wake up really early the next day so we can get back to Valladolid in time for class. This should be interesting, but fun!