My wife’s parents are pretty seasoned travelers. For her dad, though, this is a pretty recent phenomenon. He ventured out of North America for the first time when he was in his late sixties. In fact, the first time he left the continent was to come on a trip with my wife and me back in 2019. We (my wife and I) visited places scattered across Europe that summer—we spent a whole month there—and we met up with my in-laws for the last ten days or so. They joined us in London, then we went to Paris (and a few other places in Northern France) and Antwerp.

Since that trip, my in-laws have been to New Zealand and Spain (to visit us) and my mother-in-law has been to the UK even more recently!

The fact that we were living in Spain for four months and had room for visitors was enough of an incentive to get a few different groups of people to come visit, including my in-laws.1 They came to visit in early November (and were followed by a few other visitors within the same month).

Of course, we took them to see as many of the sights in and around Santander as we could, including a nice trip to Santillana del Mar and Comillas. We visited El Capricho (a funky house designed by the famous Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí) and the ruined 14th century church which has been converted to a cemetery (one of my wife’s favorite spots).

A tower at El Capricho. I think the whole house looks like it is made of Legos.

Rural Cantabria

We had been meaning to venture farther into the rural areas around us ever since we arrived. We have driven through some of these areas (especially those between Santander and Bilbao), but hadn’t really spent a lot of time actually exploring the area. My in laws’ visit seemed like the perfect excuse to see what we could see if we ventured off the “beaten path” a bit.

Picos de Europa

There is a mountain range (and national park) in Cantabria and Asturias called Picos de Europa, part of which is visible from Santander on a clear day. They are very imposing mountains, easily as dramatic-looking as most of the mountain ranges I have seen in person. From what I understand, these mountains got their name from the fact that they are among the first things in continental Europe you can see if you are aboard a ship coming from the Americas; hence they are “the peaks of Europe.” Like I said, we had been meaning to go explore the area for a few months by the time we actually did it, and we were not disappointed!

Driving through the mountains, my wife kept commenting on how spectacular the mountains looked. She said, “I have never been to Switzerland, but I can’t imagine it looks any more amazing than this!” In some ways, the mountains kind of reminded me of the Tetons, rising dramatically from the valley floor with lots of exposed granite.

Our “final destination” in the mountains was a cable car that whisks you up into the central massif at a point called Fuente Dé. The temperature difference between the valley floor and the height of the top station of the cable car was something we weren’t quite prepared for! There were pockets of snow on the ground and a very aggressive biting wind that cut right through our thin coats.

My wife, likely freezing, after riding the cable car at Fuente Dé

Potes

On the way up to Fuente Dé we drove through a few towns, including an extremely charming village called Potes. Our host family (the people in whose home we lived in Santander) had mentioned how much they loved Potes, but it wasn’t until this trip that we had ventured to see what it was all about.

We found a restaurant that was open and had a nice meal inside. (As is typical—especially in rural Spain—many businesses close in the afternoon for the famous Spanish siesta, which can make it tricky to find food or other amenities if your timing is a bit off … and most Americans’ “internal clocks”—ours included—are set to be pretty “off” of typical Spanish daily life.) The waiter didn’t speak English much at all, so I got some practice with my Spanish-speaking abilities.2

I can definitely see why our hosts said they loved this village so much. There was so much “old world charm” around every corner! It is a quaint and beautiful little town (as these pictures can probably communicate)!

The “True Cross”

Outside of Potes there is a monastery that (supposedly) houses the largest surviving piece of the “true cross,” which is to say, a small sliver of the actual cross upon which Jesus was crucified.3 2023 was designated as a “jubilee year” for this particular relic, meaning there are special perks for making a pilgrimage to see this relic. We stopped into the church—I was surprised to find it empty— and got a faint glimpse of this relic (no photos allowed). We didn’t see anyone who was there on a pilgrimage (at least not obviously).

We saw signs near many churches in Northern Spain with symbols indicating the direction of the Camino de Santiago, which often included two symbols. I didn’t realize until we were at this particular church that one of these symbols was meant to indicate that this was the direction toward this particular relic at this church. The other symbol was showing the way to Santiago de Compostela. I knew the Santiago symbol was kind of like a stylized seashell, but since I always saw it alongside a cross, I just figured the two symbols were somewhat synonymous. But, in this area, we saw signs showing just the cross (without the usual seashell), which clued me into the fact that cross symbol was always pointing toward this relic/pilgrimage site … it just happened that the churches we had visited were far enough away from both “endpoints” that the signs pointed in the same direction. (The “main” route of the Camino de Santiago is significantly south of where we spent most of our time in Spain. The signs we would see in Santander and Bilbao (and Oviedo and Gijón) were for the “Northern Way,” which follows the coast most of the way (and allows you to see this piece of the true cross along the way.).)

An example of th signs we saw scattered around Northern Spain, indicating the path of the Camino de Santiago.

A similar sign, but *without* the indication of the Camino de Santiago. This one points only to the “true cross” relic.

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1 More on these other visitors, soon … I hope.

2 The good news? No one ended up with some sort of weird food due to a misunderstanding. Everyone got what they thought they were getting. :)

3 Supposedly, there are enough of these small slivers of the true cross spread across churches in Europe and the Middle East that one could build four or five crosses.