LARD HAT

Summer is Coming to Madrid—6 Things I’m Excited About

Yes, folks, summer is on its way. The eternal debate, however, still rages. Which is better? Summer or winter? While both seasons have their advantages and disadvantages, I tend to prefer summer.

Here are 6 things I’m excited about:

1. Gazpacho, sherry and carpaccio. As much as I love red wine and cocido, I’m also happy when summer rolls around and it’s time for delicious cold seasonal foods. Drinking sherry in various specialty bars is also a plus. Also, the super-abundance of tomatoes and eggplants is great for making sauces and pastas.

2. Synthesizing Vitamin D naturally. Vitamin D makes everything seem awesome. In summer you can get a huge vitamin buzz in about 15 minutes.

3. Daylight past 10 PM. God bless European latitudes. It stays light until 10 or 10:30 most of the summer, and you can do all kinds of things.

4. Finding out who’s pro-bullfighting and who’s anti-bullfighting. In late Spring, bullfighting season starts, and suddenly all the closet animal rights activists get all worked up about bullfighting. The ironic part is that virtually none of them are vegetarians. They just somehow have the idea that being anally electrocuted in a slaughterhouse is much more dignified for bulls. I like to know who these people are, so I can take the rest of their opinions less seriously. Hypocrites.

5. Brutally hideous fashion. When Spanish people are mostly covered up, they look respectable for the most part. But give them a chance to walk around half-dressed in the heat and they’ll bring out clothes that are shocking and horrible even to my provincial sensibilities. It’s like a circus, and you can sit all day and just watch the freaks go by.

6. Laughing at everyone who starts whining about the heat. You’ve never felt real heat till you’ve spent, oh, let’s say 20 summers in Phoenix, Arizona. Go do that and then let’s talk about how hot it is in Madrid.

Here are the things I’m not really looking forward to about summer:

1. Watching my income decrease by 80% as all my students decide they’d rather be synthesizing Vitamin D than coming to English class. Pretty much self-explanatory why this sucks.

2. Sweating like a pig at night. Sleep, and all other bed-related activities become sticky, sweaty events whether you’re alone or in company. I’m pretty sure pigs actually refer to this as “Sweating like a fat German-American in an environment he’s not genetically designed for.”

3. Listening to Europeans complain about how “air conditioning makes them sick.” This is apparently an old-wives’ tale that Europeans take really seriously. Europeans consider air conditioning to be more dangerous than mosquitoes in a malaria zone. They’ll be like, “Oh my God! Cold Air! Get it away from me!”

In the end, summer wins my vote.

Coming soon: Which is better? Madrid or Barcelona?

Santander, Cantabria

Santander is a port city in the Cantabria region in the north of Spain, known mostly for the bank of the same name that was founded there. It’s not a typical tourist destination, but has a lot to offer the visitor in the form of fresh seafood and great beaches in and around the city.

cliffs, santander, faro mayor

Cliffs, close to Faro Mayor lighthouse. All photos by Lucia Moretti Design.

A lot of Spanish coastal cities have beaches nearby, but few have the beach an easy walk from anywhere. Santander has several beautiful beaches just a few minutes from downtown. Playa del Sardinero, Playa del Camello and Playa de la Magdalena are all worth a visit. If you want, you can cross the bay to Playa del Puntal (the boat goes to Somo, a little village) which is enormous and much less busy.

playa del puntal, somo, cantabria

Playa del Puntal.

The typical foods are rabas (fried pieces of squid), chipirones (small squid, usually grilled with onions and peppers), and interestingly Spanish omelette stuffed with ham and cheese, shrimp, baby eels or other delicious things. It’s also a good place to havepinchos. They’re not quite as good as Basque Country pintxos, but they’re abundant and cheap.

rolling hills, santander, cantabria, spain

The region of Cantabria is small, and known for its rolling green hills and beautiful beaches, there are several other places worth visiting around Santander: Sanitllana del Mar and Laredo spring to mind. Also nearby is the Cave of Altamira, site of the first cave paintings ever discovered.

The center of Santander is busy and full of shops, and there are plenty of nightlife options if you’re into that sort of thing.

The negatives: the people are somewhat snobbish and unfriendly (just like at home in Madrid) and not terribly used to foreigners. The weather is not incredible either: it frequently rains and is often cloudy, but doesn’t get particularly hot in summer or cold in winter.

Why don’t you show me that Paris,” she said,” that you have written about?” One thing I know, that at the recollection of these words I suddenly realized the impossibility of ever revealing to her that Paris which I had gotten to know, the Paris whose arondissements are undefined, a Paris that has never existed except by virtue of my loneliness, my hunger for her. Such a huge Paris! It would take a lifetime to explore it again. This Paris, to which I alone had the key, hardly lends itself to a tour, even with the best of intentions; it is a Paris that has to be lived, that has to be experienced each day in a thousand different forms of torture, a Paris that grows inside you like a cancer, and grows and grows until you are eaten away by it.

Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer