Female writer: Aphra Behn (1640-1689)

 

Discovering Cantabria: La Virgen del Mar

La Virgen del Mar is the patron saint of Santander since 1979. To this shrine comes whole ship’s crews after hard times onboard. The Santander bishopric chronicle that the carving appears floating in the coast, so it may come from a shipwreck. The people who lived nearby tried to build the shrine in Rostrío, but the very next day the building materials appear back where the carving was found. They take heed of the message and erect the shrine in the isle of San Román de la Llanilla.

The location of the shrine of La Virgen del Mar is near the sea. This cause the partially destruction during the storms. Perhaps its biggest destruction was at the end of the seventeenth century. The first shrine dates from about 1400 but there was another after because it is known that there was an ancient shrine in 1315.

The festivity of La Virgen del Mar it is held on Pentecost Monday, that is, 51 after the Resurrection Sunday. That is why every year it changes the date.

Few days after the festivity as the patron saint of Santander, the icon of the Virgin is carried in a night procession with light torches to the parish of San Román. Then, in her big day, is also carried back in a procession led by the bishop and the mayor of Santander to his former place, the shrine of La Virgen del Mar. That day, the city council offers a free lunch outdoors to every one that is in the isle. This lunch consists of the typical Cocido Montañés (highland stew) and Sardinada (a barbeque of sardines). In the afternoon there are several activities and the festivity is finish with a traditional ‘romeria’.

INSTAGRAM  photographer

-Marta.

'The handmaid's tale' by Margaret Atwood

Title: ‘The handmaid’s tale’

Author: Margaret Atwood

Publisher: Vintage Classics (Penguin)

Pages: 479

Year: 1985

IBSN-13: 9781784871444

Price: 6.01 (Amazon)

Note: 10

Travel tips

Hi everybody!

I’m Saru and I am responsible of the travel section. I will give you some tips and advises and I will talk about my experiences in the places I have been to.

First, I would like to talk about is the most difficult part about organizing a trip, the destination and the plane tickets. I am very curious, and I make a lot of researchs and follow a lot of Instagram profiles of cities or countries tourist offices as well as photographers or hashtags. Each time I see an interesting place, landmark, landscape, anything worth visiting, I tag it in Google Maps as “want to go” or “starred place”. When I save enough money, I choose a destination among the ones marked in the map. Then, I start to search through internet webpages about that destination to investigate about the prices, customs, traditions, etc.

Once I have read all of that, I look through different flight search engines to find out what are the cheapest companies that flight to that place (that kind of webpages used to make you pay a bit more for being the intermediaries) and what are the most common layovers. Once I write down all that information I start to search myself for similar flights in the low-cost companies’ sites. I used to travel with Norwegian, but I have also travelled with Ryanair and Transavia. I don’t like Transavia because it only allows you to travel with one piece of baggage and they doesn’t assure you that it will get in the cabin and they will make you check it in, making you pay for it. The good thing about Norwegian is that they have the ‘low-cost calendar’ and you can see where you can see the prices of the flight all the days of the month, allowing you to choose the cheapest.

I am from Spain, therefore the best airports from where to travel are Barcelona and Alicante, but I am from the north (Santander) so the best airport for me is Madrid, where I also can get cheap deals.

Norwegian is a Scandinavian enterprise (from Norway) so the cheapest flights they offer are to fennoscandinavia. Then, you can, for sure, find a cheap flight making a ‘layover’ (you buy separately both flights) in Oslo, Stockholm or Copenhagen. Thanks to this I went to Finland (buying Madrid-Stockholm, Stockholm-Helsinki and Helsinki-Madrid) for 120€ when a direct flight was 210€, almost 100€ cheaper.

Beware of the cookies! Your computer saves the cookies of the webpages you visit and, true fact, the prices rises each time you make the same search. So, I recommend you to delete the cookies each time before researching and to write down in a notebook the prices and the day of the week because, as many of you already know, it is cheaper to travel early in the morning or late in the day and in Tuesday and Thursday. Beware! I am talking about the best hour to travel, not the best time to buy the tickets! Ryanair uses a tool for the selling of tickets that vary the prices according to the demand. Therefore, to buy to Ryanair the best is to buy when people do not use the computer, I would venture to say that about 9/10 in the morning or 12/1 in the night.

Well, these are the tricks and tips I use when I buy plane tickets. I will upload more tips and advices for your trips.

Greetings!

Saru.