Advertisement
I woke up this morning quite tired after staying up last night to post my blog... After a few minutes of hoping I could go back to sleep, I realised it was nearly breakfast time, so I dressed and headed downstairs. Thankfully Raquel and Victoria were still in bed - they are lovely but being twins at two and a half is a lot to take in at once! I was their new favourite toy last night...
Shortly after they did appear, Merche (Fernando's wife) took them to nursery and Fernando took me and Christine upstairs. Christine and Richard are a lovely couple from Nottinghamshire who have come for Christine to improve her Spanish... Once in the classroom, Fernando explained that we were going to start from scratch but go over everything very quickly until we came across any problems. Thus began my crash course in Spanish! A very simple introduction was given - the alphabet and its pronunciation. Far easier to pronounce than English: there are only 5 vowel sounds in Spanish compared to 24 in English... We carried on to cover the basic 'hello, my name is..., I am from..., etc' (Hola, me llamo..., soy de..., for those
who were wondering!) and then were told to write about where we lived. This was quite difficult - there's only so many ways you can say the scenery is very beautiful in Spanish... All the other comments like 'lots of residents', 'many shops', 'big city' are a little irrelevant when discussing Skye! After a short interlude for tea, we carried on to describe our families, though once the started asking about cousins I gave up - I have too many to explain where each one lives, and what they all do, and how many kids they have!
Soon it was time to finish for the day, which turned out to be only about half an hour before lunch so I went downstairs to entertain the twins. They are lovely and very energetic, though Raquel is louder, more outgoing and Victoria is quieter and more calculating - last night she spent at least ten minutes waiting for Raquel to put the biscuit bowl down and look away long enough to steal it! Lunch was delicious, but then all meals so far have been great. After this was a short siesta, then we all went into Santander.
Fernando dropped Christine,
Richard and I outside the Gran Casino, and we walked out to the Palacio de La Magdalena, which is on a peninsula. Very impressive from the outside, though it would have been nice to go inside. It's not still used as a royal palace though. On a much more depressing note, in the grounds of the Palacio was what is best described as a mini menagerie. It only had seals, sea lions and ducks, but they all looked so sad. The seals looked especially unfortunate - they were in a small pool of water, which was being filled up very slowly with a siphon from another pool which was full.
We headed along beside the beach into town, and since we had some time to spare and it was starting to rain a little, we found a bar. The lights in their bathroom were very strange - touch sensitive! On second thought, the whole bathroom was cool - fancy blue glass sinks, and blue tiles on the walls. After some drinks, we carried on into the centre to find the cathedral, where we were getting picked up. Passing the tourist office, I nipped in to ask about hostels for
when I stay in Santander Saturday night and was given this brilliant wee map that has all the places marked with prices and everything! At this point, I decided it was time I introduce Christine and Richard with a photo, since I will be spending the rest of the week with them...
Anyway, we were collected and taken back to the house just in time for dinner (around 9.30pm!), which I nearly fell asleep in. I'm knackered after a morning of intense Spanish and an afternoon/evening of walking, and so am going to head to bed. It is 11.30pm now after all! (Amazingly, the girls are still up!)
On a final note, I thought I should show you my view!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.135s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 13; qc: 52; dbt: 0.1071s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Spain
Really enjoyed reading your blog. What a great photo.