I love the Spanish mullet

It's pervasive and beautiful. In an ironic sort of way. So many young men in Spain have a fabulous mullet that is either all shaggy and distinctively "business in the front, party in the back" or the alternative "business in the front, Bob Marley in the back" dredlocked version. Awesome.

Today was quite a good day. It's been a long week of hard work, so I look forward to the weekends very much. And bonus for today is that it was sunny. Very sunny. Cold and windy, but the first time that I could walk outside and feel bright warm rays on my translucently greenish skin. I think I was starting to grow my own colony of lichen from all of the damp cool air and long hours sitting almost mime-like hunched over the microscope. So I took advantage of the day, after a brief trip to lab, to roam the town a bit. I wandered over to the cathedral coincidentally right as the church bells started to toll to call for 5 o'clock Mass. It was an amazing cacophony as two off the bells swung around and around about their mounting - four chimes per rotation of each iron bell off set from each other in a succession of impressive clanging. As the rotation slowed and the tolling subsided, the peals softened until there was an almost mournful trail of the final soft tones, calling all late comers to scurry up the steep stone steps of the cathedral.

I met Rushi precisely at 5 pm on the steps of the town hall, and he was hardly awake. That's part of why I arranged to spend the day with him - to drag him out into the sun for some much needed fresh air for both of us. The first words out of his mouth were "churros? I'm hungry." Oh yes. So we went to a little cafe that Marian says has been just the same for as long as she can remember. It's one of those places that was first decorated in the 1950s and hasn't changed even the placement of tables ever since. Churros are sticks of fried doough Fried dough wins in any form in my book, and churros are super awesome. They're served with chocolate in a small cup that's almost the consistency of pudding and rich but not very sweet. You dip the churros in the chocolate, and they're perfect. So after churros and chocolate, we wandered over to the waterfront and Rushi wanted coffee. I teased that we were just going to move from churros to coffee to beer to wine to dinner to cocktails, and that's pretty much the progression of the night.

We ended up around the other side of the peninsula in Sardinero which is more of an upscale ocean-front part of Santander and had a few beers in an "Irish Pub" overlooking fishing boats lit up on the ocean. Then we realized we were hungry and ready to move back into the main part of town. We decided to return to the restaurant where I got just a tease of a taste of pinchos last weekend but figured we would take a bus rather than walk in the cold wind. Best. Decision. Ever. That was the most entertaining bus ride of my life. Of course it's valentine's day which is apparently not much of a holiday here amongst the other crowd but is picking up steam with the younger kids. So one stop after we boarded, a hoard of dozens of kids no older than 18 get on the bus, and it's totally like a grade school dance - girls at the back of the bus and boys at the front. Half of the girls were wearing cheap plastic tiaras with pink feathers and were dressed in high heels and short skirts. And then they started to sing. Rushi said it was something about how this is a special day, etc etc. And then the boys all started clapping in rhythm and singing their own song but as more of a lyrical rap type performance. Completely surreal and like some bizzare scene out of "Westside Story". And even though the two groups of guys and gals didn't interact for the whole bus ride, they all got out at the same destination. And presumably proceeded to stand across the room from each other for the rest of the night.

So we ended up at the pinchos place and found our little spot at the end of the bar, ordered 5 pinchos, and devoured those in less than 2 minutes. We stuffed ourselves. I think our server was a little bit appalled since the tradition in spain is to have a couple in one place and then move along to the next destination. But they're so good. It's my ideal food - three perfect bites. One as the new discovery, one bite to appreciate the mix of flavors, and the last bite to part ways and prepare for the next delightful treat. For those who missed the earlier post, pinchos are mostly piles of stuff on bread. Sometimes it's some sort of meat with mushrooms or tuna with anchovies or fried quail egg with spanish ham or egg with potato or potato with octopus, but they're all yummy. And since it's difficult to decide we just kept telling the guy "bring us 5 more that we haven't already had" and ended up with 15 in total. They're cheap which is cool, but our tab still ended up being a mile long with 15 pinchos, 4 beers, and 2 after dinner liquors to make it all settle a little better. Then we moved to a bar in the square that has outside seating and "people watched" all of the groups of made up gals tottering on high heels, the groups of international students who had recently arrived, the drunken men oscillating between threatening to punch each other followed by "I love you man" making up. I'm glad Rushi is only part adopted Spanish and yet still enough Indian to recognize that 2 am is late enough and not try to keep me out until past 5 in the morning again. Especially since tomorrow is supposed to be another beautiful sunny day...