Where on Earth is Imogen? : Santander

Just got back to a boiling hot Madrid (the car said 38 degrees when we arrived) from a lovely few days away with the family in Santander.

On Wednesday we had a bit of drama at lunchtime. The girls were arguing and fighting, as they often do, but Mónica still had her knife and fork in her hands and her fork somehow managed to end up deep inside Carlota's arm. This was followed by lots of screaming from both girls before the fork was taken out and I became first-aider cleaning up blood and putting ice on the four holes in Carlota's arm! The girls then tried to stir up more panic by ringing their mother saying "Mama, don't get angry. Where are you? Get back here as quick as you can!" without telling her what had happened. After I encouraged her, Carlota did eventually tell her mum what was up, imagine what she would have been thinking otherwise?! Thankfully, despite Carlota complaining that her hand (not her arm) hurt and that she needed to go to hospital, we decided that the injury wasn't too serious and that we could proceed with our plan to go to Santander that evening.

We left at about 5.30pm in the end and, after getting lost (they don't seem to own a sat-nav) and stopping off to eat sandwiches outside a church in a tiny little town, we arrived at our destination at about 10pm. When I was told that we were going to stay in Uncle Toño's house in Santander, I wasn't expecting much. I thought it would be a little holiday home with maybe a couple of bedrooms and one of us sleeping on the sofa. However, I was wrong. The Santander house was, of course, a flat as because so many people live in flats here they call them houses. The flat wasn't small either - three bedrooms, two bathrooms, kitchen and large lounge/dining area in a complex with swimming pool, playground and padel-tennis court - it was about the same size as the flat in Madrid! Uncle Toño must have quite a bit of money.

We spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday on the beach so there was lots of sandcastles, football, catch, paddling in the freezing cold sea, sunbathing... etc. We were fairly lucky with the weather in that it was sunny the whole time we were there. Unfortunately, the first couple of days were quite windy so not so warm! I managed to burn quite a bit though whilst the family tanned with their Spanish skin. On Friday night we went to La Magdalena, a peninsula where there's a royal palace, as there was a horse show-jumping event on. We watched the horses for a bit before the girls went off to play in a playground and I had a drink with the parents. We then went to see the seals and old boats on one part of the peninsula.

Thursday's beach: El Sardinero

El Sardinero's other beach

Horseys

Seals. Got confused when they were going on about focas before we went so had to look it up!

The beach we went to on Friday and Saturday

Beach on La Magdalena

This morning the plan had been to spend a last couple of hours on the beach but Carlota changed them by falling off her skateboard at the park yesterday and getting some nasty friction burns on her hand, elbow and side. Instead, we went into the centre of Santander as we hadn't been there yet. I was glad that we had a chance to go as I was curious to have a little wander round after seeing a big banner saying that it had one of the most beautiful bays in the world (according to who?). From what little I saw of it, it seemed like a very nice place and, admittedly, the bay is stunning. It's a shame I couldn't stay there for a bit longer!