Summertime Adventures August, Part 2

Such delay in posting!  Lost power for a few days when Hurricane Sandy hit and it took a while to get everything working again.  Anyways, this is almost the finale of my two month European vacation.

Back in Santander it was the el Festival Intercultural de Santander.  There are tons of booths set up with food and drinks from countries around the world along with goods from countries around the world, like jewelry, etc.  We visited a couple of days and tried food and drinks from Brazil, France, Germany, Cuba, and Australia.  At the France booth we had delicious crepes, of course with cheese, and wine.  With our friend Pedro we visited the Australian booth and had a kangaroo burger!  It was actually good, weird, but good...and purple... I was able to buy some cool gifts there, including some cool gifts for myself. :)



That weekend my boyfriend and I decided to take a day trip to the south of Cantabria, where his Dad's family is originally from and a part of Cantabria I had not visited yet.  First we visited Reinosa, where most of his family came from in this area, and took some coffees and typical pastries called pantortillas (which were delicious).  From there we traveled to town of Fontibre which is known for the Nacimiento del Ebro, the 'birthplace" of the Ebro River.  It was awesome to see where the most important river in Spain begins!  We walked along the river for a while and took pictures along the way.  At the head of the river is a statue of the Virgin of Pilar that shows the crests from all the provinces that the Ebro runs through.

When we left Fontibre we traveled to Julióbriga, the most important ancient Roman city in Cantabria.  It was mainly ruins, but it was still very cool as a history major to visit something so ancient.  Especially coming from the United States where very little is older than a couple hundred years.  We walked among the different ruins, of the wealthy and poor homes, along with visiting the Romanic Church where you could climb up to the bells.

Afterwards we drove around to look for special churches, iglesias rupestres, churches that are built into rocks.  This region has multiple churches like this and we went to visit some of the major ones.  They were very difficult to find because they were in very small villages or in narrow passes.  Once we found them, most were very small or were blocked off so you couldn't go inside or see inside very well.  We did go to one that was very cool though, as we tried to go up a steep road to where we thought the church could be (so steep the car couldn't make it up), we noticed an old man sitting outside.  We drove up to him and asked him for directions, turns out he is in charge of the church's key and he gave us the key to go inside and visit the church.  Inside the church was actually very big and had two floors, usually my boyfriend warns me against doing "reckless" things like climbing trees or trying to go out on the old, rickety fire escape at the hostel we stayed at in NYC...but he actually encouraged me to climb up to the second floor of this couple hundred year old church!  Of course I did...

Before heading home we drove all the way up the hills to the Observatorio Astronómico de Cantabria, where we were able to observe the Sun through special telescopes.  The road up the mountain was so steep and treacherous; we were in his mom's small car and there were parts where we were concerned about making it up.  Fortunately we did make it in one piece, though his mom was not happy to hear about her poor car on the roads down here. It was extremely cool, I've been to observatories to see the night sky before but I've never been to the observatory to view the sun.   We looked through two telescopes, the first was not as high powered but the second one you could even see the sun bursts around the sun as well as the sun spots.  It was not as detailed as you would see the night sky but it was still very impressive.  It was also cool that up near the observatory there were some wind turbines, it may seem weird, but I've never been so close to wind turbines in person.  Before heading back to Santander we stopped back in Reinosa to take a drink before the long drive home.

I was coming up on my last week in Spain and we still had a lot to do together!