July 23, 2010 Cudillero to Santillana del Mar to Tudes

Katie and Trevor feeling the "torture" of wandering the streets of yet another quaint village!

The Walls see Santillana del Mar

View of the Picos, right out our window.

The entrance to our delightful accommodations.

Nice view for Katie to wake up to!

The pool, built into the terrain.

Some of the village dogs.

A villager, bringing home the cows for the day.

This morning we woke up, packed, and hit the road. The driving part is not very exciting so I’m not even going to bother talking about it. Everytime we have driven to a new spot, it has been my turn to write, well that makes it easier for me! When we drive we drive for 3 or 4 hours usually, but usually whatever we estimate it’s going to be it turns out to be like an hour longer than that. Anyways we drove for about 2 hours and then we went to Altamira. They have caves with drawings from between 12 and 15 thousand years ago. We took a Spanish tour because English wasn’t an option. Spanish was kind of a bad idea seeing as really only my dad picked up anything. I was able to understand a little by our tour guides gestures and my little knowledge of the Spanish language. It was pretty cool, all the drawings and animals on the ceilings. Also some of the rocks had no drawing but the rocks had faces in them, you could see the eyes and the nose and mouth, or in Spanish that would be ojos, narriz y boca.

After we were done there we drove a little ways down the road to Santillana del Mar and explored that town. It was pretty cool because the road was blocked so no cars could go down that road. There are so many stray dogs and cats in Spain. I saw about 3 while wandering. We went in a little jewelry shop and my mom bought a pair of earrings, they were SO cute… I didn’t even see them. We saw a museum of torture, we didn’t go in  but we saw a cage hanging and a skeleton in it. They must have put a man in there and let him starve and let the animals get him. Gee I wonder what he did to deserve that. We wandered for about 2 hours and then hit the road again.

On the rest of our drive to Tudes, in the Picos de Europa mountains we drove through a gorge. It was so cool.  We could see up the sides of the mountains which was very pretty. Also very nerve wrecking for my mom though. There were so many little twists and turns and my dad was going really fast. We arrived in Tudes at around 5 or 5:30. We learned from Tony that the village of Tudes has only 25 permanent residents. It is such a small town. The apartment is super nice though and there is a swimming pool, foosball, air hockey, pool and a computer in the “Social Area”. It is so cool! We had dinner at the only place to eat dinner in Tudes, I think it was called “El Ingles”. I had chicken nuggets that were very good. After dinner we chilled and watched Casino Royale.

Katie