The more we travel, the more that we are drawn to smaller towns. We have been to a lot of Spanish cities and have enjoyed them all, but we have missed out on a lot of the smaller towns. Now is the time that we are becoming more focused on the out of the way places. We found one of those in Castro Urdiales in the province of Cantabria. It doesn’t even have a train station, but this is one of those places we could stay a couple of months. Unfortunately, this year, we only had 4 days. The first day was over 90 degrees but the rest of the time was about 70 and rainy. We still had a wonderful time exploring, walking to the further reaches, and hanging out in the pubs. We ate a lot of good cheap food this week….
Castro has a fortress and a church like most Spanish towns but these were super impressive because they are on a small peninsula into the sea. It was a Gothic church (the best kind of church) that had some flying buttresses to make it look fancy and it was next to a Roman bridge that led to the old port. It made for some really cool pics. I wish the sun would have come out a bit more so I could get some good pics. The rest of the old town was also pretty scenic.
So after visiting the 2 attractions in a town…. what do you do? We did a lot of walking. The town had a great boardwalk that went for almost a mile. Our HomeExchange was at the end of the beach so we enjoyed a long walk into town twice a day to get to the best pintxo bars and restaurants. We also could continue on outside of town to follow the paths along the cliffs. It was a nice relaxing time and we can see ourselves exploring these foot trails and the bike trails in a much longer stay. The beaches looked fun but the hot weather stay with us so we didn’t do any swimming.
This is the life we have been talking about for years. We have been looking for places with good reasonable price restaurants, nice beaches, and long hiking and biking trails. It is a tourist town but we only saw a handful of non-Spanish tourists and not cruise ships. Castro Urdiales is now on our list of slow travel destinations….whenever we decide to really slow down…. Maybe next year.
Next week, we meet up with brother and sister in law- Paul and Kara, and start exploring Bilbao!