Sunday 20th October, 2026 – Oviedo / Uviéu, Santander

Sunday morning saw us on the move again, this time checking out of Oviedo and heading for our next stay in Santander. Because it was Sunday, and because it was hard to find any really good places for dinner, I’d booked us in for lunch at a place in Santander.

First we had to get there – and I can highly recommend the drive between the two cities. It passes through some stunning scenery in the form of the Picos de Europa. They may be small in terms of mountain ranges (though they are part of a larger range, the Cantabrian range and I am told they cover approximately 500 square kilometres, and are 35 kilometres wide (east to west), 15 kilometres from north to south. They seem a lot bigger and on a beautiful sunny day with not a cloud in sight they looked magnificent from the motorway. We’re not walkers, or at least some of us are not, so we didn’t get to explore in any significant way. Perhaps another time. If you want to know more about what the walking is like, I recommend a read of a friend’s blog, Notes from Camelid Country.

We did see some of the birdlife but from where we were it was hard to know exactly what. The region is a national park (and has been for just over 30 years) and amongst the avian populations are griffon vultures, Egyptian vultures, and golden eagles. Whatever we saw was definitely one of those three, looking to be pretty much the size of a barn door, and drifting happily on the thermals. I should have brought binoculars…

We made it to Santander in good time and parked up in another underground car park close to the restaurant. While these are not always cheap, it’s lovely to know that your car is safe (most of them are under camera surveillance) and that when you get back to it, it will be cool and pleasant rather than having turned into an oven. From there it was a short walk downhill to La Mulata. I was glad I’d booked because although it was empty when we got there, it didn’t take long for it to fill up, with all the tables occupied and a healthy crowd of diners standing at the bar, lining the fish counter, or sitting outside at the more casual tables.

The space itself is lovely in shades of blue and white, with polished wood, and porthole-style windows giving quite the nautical feel to it, despite being some distance from the beaches of Santander. Michelin says: “One of the classic addresses in the Puertochico district of the city, La Mulata owes its name to a species of black crab that lives in the rocks dotted around its docks and jetties. It features a maritime-inspired minimalist interior which includes a bar that is always very busy thanks to its array of tapas and “raciones”, a striking fish and seafood display (close to it there’s also a live lobster tank), plus a pleasant dining room. The à la carte menu also offers a few meat dishes plus an interesting selection of savoury rice options with a focus on the sea.”

We settled in to study the menu and make our choices. After some deliberation, and an amuse bouche of fantastically good gazpacho and bread, we were ready to try some of the recommended dishes. We took the advice of the Michelin Guide, and ordered the “superb pan-cooked clams“ and also enquire about the fresh fish of the day” along with the assorted carpaccio (red shrimp, salmon, sea bass, bonito, octopus), and the squid rabas to share. What arrived was stunning fresh and the clams in red sauce were terrific, although I think I could have continued eating the carpaccio all day unless someone had stopped me!

After an excellent round of starters, we wondered if they could top the quality, freshness, or taste of what we’d already eaten. It turned out they could! Mains were soon with us, in the shapes of the black rice, which is something I can usually not resist, and the fish of the day, hake. The rice was supposed to be for two people but was more than enough for all four of us, especially as we all had a decent-sized slice of hake as well, each one topped with a massive prawn and accompanied by some very good potatoes.

By the time we’d worked our way through all of that there was no way the delightful staff could talk us into anything more. We finished our wine, paid the bill, and went outside to collect the car and fight the alarmingly convoluted one-way system that makes it very hard to drive in the old town part of Santander. First we walked to the hotel to establish the lie of the land. We were staying at the Palacio de Pombo which had the advantage of being very centrally located and the disadvantage of being temporarily without a car park, the underground car park right next to it being closed for renovations. Oh, and it’s also right in the middle of the tangle of complicated one way streets, in the low emission zone with nowhere obvious to stop.

This made the whole process of dropping off the luggage way more complicated than it ought to have been. After checking and and getting our room keys, R and I walked back to get the car leaving Lynne and A parked in the hotel reception from where they could see the street and would be able to leap into action when we stopped outside. This was all made even more complicate when I first couldn’t find the car in the underground car park – I solved that problem when I realised there were entrances to the car park on two different levels, and I was therefore on the wrong level – and then I thought I’d left the car keys in the hotel. I was back down by the restaurant when I realised they’d caught up in a fold of my shirt!

Finally reunited with the car, we then went round the one way system more than once as the SatNav became completely confused and tried to get me to turn left through a building! After a great deal of swearing we finally pulled up outside the hotel, the luggage was off-loaded and I went off to try and locate the car park that the hotel staff recommended we use instead of the one we’d been expecting to park up in.

Finally sorted out for the next three nights, and so full of food it was hard to even consider the idea of eating again, we opted to check out the immediate neighbourhood, and then find a source of vermuts. It turned out we were a stone’s throw from Santander’s newest tourist attraction, the Faro Santander, and just two streets across from the Centro Botin and the promenade. The views from the Centro were stunning – the massive bay stretching in front of us – and you could absolutely see why every table on the ground floor bar’s terrace was taken.

We gave up the struggle to find a space for all four of us and instead headed back across the road into the old town where we soon settled at a bar close to the hotel to drink vermut and plan the following day’s sightseeing. It looked like Santander was going to prove to be well worth the journey (and the horrors of the one way system)!