Hiking in Northern Spain

Last weekend our group journeyed to Northen Spain. We left for the train right after class and arrived around 10pm. We were told that we would have to take a taxi to our hotel, which was in a small mountain town. We got 3 taxis and began our ride through the mountains. One car sick girl puking in a bag, a serenade by our taxi driver, and a 200 Euro taxi ride later, we made it to our hotel. Luckily, the serenading taxi man was a nice guy and cut us a deal so we only had to pay half price, 100 Euro, per taxi, which cut down on costs significantly.
One of the unfortunate things about picking such a small town in the mountains is the fact that the bus schedule through there is almost obsolete (as we found out the night before). The upside is that it was one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. We arrived at dark so we weren´t able to see the mountains until morning. I woke up and DeeDee pulled open the curtains to let me see the view from our window and I was immediately wide awake. The town had about 10 houses total and they were all old and picturesque, with the mountains in the background. We began our hike at about 10:30, had lunch on the side of the trail, encountered 2 locals who let us look through their telescope at the wildlife they found, and arrived at the peaks at about 2pm. The hike was almost completely uphill, with some inclines as steep as 70 degrees, and the weather was slighty chilly and rainy, which kept us cool. The views were breathtaking and the silence (except for the occasional sound of cow bells as we encountered them on our walk, standing in the middle of our path but completely oblivious to us) was amazing. We think we hiked about 8 miles in all. After taking some pictures, we returned to our hotel and scrounged for dinner, as we were too cheap to buy it from the hotel (some of us had sandwiches our Spanish moms had packed, others had cereal, meat and bread, or PB and rice crackers). We rested, drank some cheap 1 Euro wine (never again! It was HORRIBLE!), and watched Harry Potter in Spanish before heading to bed.
We headed out early the next morning, rested briefly at our houses, then went to Noche Blanco in Madrid, which is a festival where all the museums are open for free all night and there all street performers and the like for entertainment. We didn´t go in anywhere because the lines were so long but it was a neat experience just the same.