Seafood is excellent in the Atlantic provinces of Spain and I wasn't about to miss a chance to sample it. It was a fair walk back to the city centre, and thence to the bayside Barrio Pesquero (Fishermen's Quarter). Families just out from church services were there. Paella pans had been set up on the sidewalk, sending enticing aromas into the air. There were a lot of choices for establishments, some of them beyond my means. Eventually I settled for a menu de la casa which consisted of sopa de pescados (fish soup), chipirones encebolladas (squid with onion), accompanied by wine and finishing off with a helado (ice cream). It was yummy. I was a bit woozy from the alcohol so I caught a bus back to the pension.
In the evening, I boarded a harbour cruise. It was a warm evening and the earlier overcast weather had dissipated. The blue sky contrasted with the aquamarine water. Heladerias and helado stands were doing a roaring business. I grabbed a sweet pastry, nothing special, for the sugar lift as dinner would be late. The Spanish buy a lot of sugar-free chewing gum. Mouth exercise, when not talking, without the sugar, hahaha.
Some of the passengers had name tags; Latter Day Saints on an outing? There were passengers from Asturias (the next autonomous community to the west). They were friendly, good natured and pleased to respond to visitors, especially Spanish speaking ones, but were dignified and reserved when you did not engage them in conversation.
The oblique light of the evening gave shape and texture to the land and water. I enjoy cruises. You really feel like you have made a journey, unlike sterile airplane journeys where the destination airport is similar to the one you left. In a philosophical mood, I wondered what lies on the other bank of the Styx. Would we discover that, as in waking from a dream, everything in life seemed to make sense but was really nonsense?
I elected not to disembark at the other side of the bay to explore, which was fortunate, because on the return passage the wind blew up suddenly from the south, churning up waves in the bay. There didn't seem to be much to see on the eastern side of the bay; the cruise was for its own sake.
In the evening I had dinner of fabada (beans, a regional speciality) with merluza (hake) at Cevejaria Santander. The TV had a game show on called Pesame Mucho (Weigh me a lot). I groaned when I recognised the awful pun on the renowned love song Besame Mucho (Kiss me a lot). As far as I could tell, contestants had to guess each other's weight.
Many city buildings were floodlit and this ghostly looking edifice isn't an image from the afterlife but the Palacete del Embarcadero, from 1920, originally for embarcations, now used for exhibitions and conferences.
From the newspaper: 1.2 millon tonnes of oranges and lemons had been destroyed to maintain prices at a cost of 20 pesetas per kilo destroyed.
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