I spent about a month in Santander, taking various weekend trips to nearby cities and day trips to nearby places like Potes, Santillana del Mar and the Picos de Europa mountains.

Santander has a lovely beach, which is quite nice in the summer. The weather was wonderful overall, except for a few days. One day, out of the blue, it started pouring down rain, which then turned into hail. I was walking back from classes at the time and had to temporarily take refuge under a bus stop. I managed to get some pictures of the aftermath of the downpour from the hotel. But then, it cleared up so fast that I was able to dry out my soaked shoes by just leaving them on the window sill for a couple hours.

The Picos de Europa has an extremely long cable car that goes up quite high. A very fun ride!

Also near Santander is the famous Altamira cave complex. Although Altamira itself is now virtually inaccessible, we did get to visit one of the nearby cave complexes. Alas, no photos due to the fragile nature of the paintings.