Santander: a beautiful port in northern Spain

by Sean McLachlan on

Yesterday we talked about some of the things to do while visiting Cantabria, Spain’s often-overlooked northern province. The best place to use as a base while touring Cantabria is the provincial capital Santander.

Santander is a port and owes its life to the sea. It has a northern bay and a southern bay divided by a thin peninsula. The southern bay is home to downtown, the port, and the popular ferry coming from Plymouth, England. The northern bay is more touristy along the shore, and more residential inland. Beaches stretch both to the north and south of town and if you don’t want to share the sand with bikini-clad Spanish women (or speedo-wearing Spanish guys) you can always walk for a bit and find an isolated cove to claim as your own. Be careful of the riptides, though. Inexperienced swimmers should stick to the main beaches in the two bays.

The water is pretty chilly but there’s steady surf that attracts surfers from all over Spain. It’s also quite clean considering that it’s so near a major port. If you’re not up to braving the water (which would be no challenge to the Alaska Polar Bear Club) you can sit in one of the many seaside cafes and sip some wine while watching the boats go by.

When asked what to do around town, every local told us to walk to the lighthouse at Cabo Mayor. It’s less than an hour’s easy stroll to the north of the northern bay. The rocky coastline is picturesque with strange geological formations, little beaches nestled between towering rocks, and windswept promontories with wide views of the sea and shoreline. The lighthouse is home to an art gallery dedicated to, you guessed it, lighthouses in art, plus a massive and somewhat obsessive collection of lighthouses on lighters, ashtrays, matchboxes, book covers, etc. Someone spent way too much time rummaging through junk shops for lighthouse ephemera!

%Gallery-96013%If you get a rainy day (and you will get a rainy day) your first stop should probably be the Museo Marítimo del Cantábrico, a fun and informative museum about the ocean. There are hundreds of ship models and a big display of fish, including a pickled squid, a sardine with two heads, and some weird deep sea beastie with glowing teeth that looks like it’s from an H.P. Lovecraft story. In the basement is a large aquarium teeming with sharks, manta rays, and other aquatic life. The terrace cafe offers a fine view of the port where you can watch the freighters go in and out.

Of course, the town offers the usual Spanish sights such as a medieval cathedral, a nice art museum, an archaeological museum, and a variety of bars and cafes. You won’t get the nightlife here that you would in Madrid or Barcelona, but you’ll get it a lot cheaper. A night out with five pinchos (appetizers), two rum and cokes, and a glass of wine came out to €19.50 ($24). The pinchos were delicious and large enough that they served as our dinner.

Local hotels are used to hooking visitors up with tour groups that can take you around the sights of Cantabria. You might want to get in touch with one of the many hiking groups too. Spanish trails aren’t always well marked, and with the unpredictable weather and high altitudes of some of the mountains, it’s best to go with a group.

London museum airbrushes out Churchill’s cigar

by Sean McLachlan on

While there have been a lot of angry comments here on Gadling about Egypt’s smoking ban and the even stricter smoking ban in Finland, neither country has tried to pretend people didn’t smoke in the past. Now someone at the Winston Churchill’s Britain at War Experience, a London museum, seems to have decided dead people could get lung cancer and airbrushed out a cigar from a photo of Winston Churchill.

A visitor to the museum noticed that a famous photo of Churchill hanging above the entrance had been doctored to remove a cigar from his mouth. The altered photo and the original can be seen here. The museum denies all responsibility and says it’s investigating, but being a museum they shouldn’t have to wait for a member of the public to correct their history, especially about the very person the museum is named after.

Churchill was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during World War Two and was famous for lighting up a stogy faster than you can say “Dresden bombing.” He also drank regularly, but his lungs and liver were apparently none the worse for wear since he died of a stroke at age ninety.

Photo courtesy Deutsches Bundesarchiv.

Canterbury’s medieval town gate saved

by Sean McLachlan on

Canterbury is famous for its beautiful cathedral, but this historic city has lots of other attractions. The old medieval entrance into town called Westgate Towers is the local favorite. Sadly, lack of funding and a dwindling number of visitors to the Westgate Towers Museum made it look like it was going to be shut down.

Local businessman Charles Lambie has stepped in and leased the towers. He’s donated £250,000 ($369,000) to the city council to keep it afloat and plans improvements to the museum to make it more attractive to visitors.

If you’re visiting Canterbury you might want to stay overnight rather than do the traditional day trip from London. Besides the cathedral, there’s an early medieval abbey, a Norman castle, the remains of a Roman house, and one of the best curry joints in England.

You won’t want to miss the Westgate Towers either. More than six hundred years old, it’s the largest medieval gateway in the UK and offers a fine view of the town. The museum has displays of weapons and armor and tells the story of the city’s medieval defenses.

Photo courtesy Necrothesp via Wikimedia Commons.

Schindler’s List factory becomes museum

by Sean McLachlan on

During World War Two, German industrialist Oskar Schindler saved some 1,200 of his Jewish workers from extermination. His enamelware and munitions factories were considered vital for the German war effort and he claimed his workers all had special skills vital for the operation of his factories, whether they had or not. Many of his “skilled mechanics” were in fact children or handicapped people.

Schindler became the subject of the book Schindler’s Ark and later the movie Schindler’s List. Now part of his factory in Krakow has become a museum to the city’s war years.

The exhibitions cover the outbreak of the war, the German invasion of Poland, Polish resistance movements, and Schindler’s struggle to save his workers. The museum is a branch of the Krakow City Historical Museum. The front page of their website has a short video about Schindler that’s quite powerful, even if you don’t understand Polish.

Photo courtesy Noa Cafri via Wikimedia Commons.

Free museums for soldiers and their families

by Sean McLachlan on

Being on active duty is tough. Soldiers spend long periods in dangerous parts of the world and only get a few precious days or weeks to see family and friends. Now the Blue Star Museums initiative is helping them spend some quality time by offering free museum admission to more than 750 venues nationwide.

Military personnel and their families can enjoy access to museums in every state for free until Labor Day on September 6. The soldier needs to present a Geneva Convention common access card (CAC), a DD Form 1173 ID card, or a DD Form 1173-1 ID card. Active duty members of the military (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard), National Guard and Reserve are all eligible. Even better, they can bring up to five immediate family members.

Blue Star Museums has an interactive map that helps you find participating museums in your area. They also have a blog with news and profiles of some of the museums.

Image of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment on patrol in Iraq courtesy the U.S. Government.