For those of you who have read my blog before, I must admit that this past year I have not been writing about our travels. We’ve been on several family trips, so it isn’t a lack of traveling that has kept me from writing. In returning to this blog, I thought about skipping the rest of our trip to Spain and starting with a more recent family trip. But in looking back through our pictures of Spain, I remembered just how wonderful a time we had there. So here I am, picking up where I left off.

When we decided to go to Spain, we knew we wanted to spend some time at the beach. The glorious, glorious beach!

Santander is located around the center of the northern coast of Spain. A long ferry travels to Santander from England, so you hear a mixture of British English and Spanish everywhere around town. We were there in May, so it wasn’t quite peak beach season. The weather, on average, was warm enough to spend a day at the beach as long as you didn’t spend too much time in the water. Playa del Sardinero is the largest and most popular beach in Santander. That is where we spent our beach time. The sand was soft and golden. The waves were large enough that you felt you were swimming in the ocean, but small enough that I felt safe enough to let my children play without being an arm distance away. Not like the California riptides where I feel that I have to hold onto each child at all times to keep them from being swept out to.

The curve of the beach is bordered on both sides by a rocky outcrop. When the tide goes out, there are tide pools to search for aquatic treasures. We stayed at Gran Hotel Sardinero, which is just across the street from the beach, a gorgeous white hotel with an architectural style similar to the casino, which it is adjacent to.

Our hotel room wasn’t quite ready when we reached Santander. We arrived in midmorning. Our children couldn’t wait to get to the beach, so we left our luggage at the hotel, ran across the street and splashed right in.

The central white building in this picture is the casino. The white building on the right is our hotel. In addition to playing at the beach, we took a boat tour around the harbor. There are two lighthouses in Santander, one towards each end of Playa del Sardinero. We got a good view of both on the tour, plus a view of the former royal palace.

We didn’t do much else in Santander besides playing at the beach. It was a welcome respite for our children from the medieval cities and museums we took them to. Sometimes, you just need a day (or two or three) at the beach.