Altamira Cave

My wife has been enticing me to visit the Cantabria area of Spain this month
by dangling a visit to Altamira Cave. Now we've learned that there's a FOUR
YEAR waiting list. I'm hoping that, because of the time of year, there may
be some openings, perhaps cancellations.

Does anyone have any experience getting to visit the cave on short notice?

"PTRAVEL" wrote in message ...
My wife has been enticing me to visit the Cantabria area of Spain this month
by dangling a visit to Altamira Cave. Now we've learned that there's a FOUR
YEAR waiting list. I'm hoping that, because of the time of year, there may
be some openings, perhaps cancellations.

Does anyone have any experience getting to visit the cave on short notice?

No chance. And you need to have a good reason to visit the caves, it's
not enough to just want to see the nice paintings.
But Cantabria is very nice and well worth a visit even without the
caves. The weather might be bad this time a year though.

r/l

"PTRAVEL" escribió en el mensaje
...
My wife has been enticing me to visit the Cantabria area of Spain this
month
by dangling a visit to Altamira Cave. Now we've learned that there's a
FOUR
YEAR waiting list. I'm hoping that, because of the time of year, there
may
be some openings, perhaps cancellations.

IIRC, you are not allowed to visit the real Altamira Cave unless the visit
is related to a scientific project or study (doctoral thesis or similar).
The massive visits in the '60s and '70s put in danger the paintings, so the
Cave was closed to the public.

A couple of years ago, it was opened the National Museum of Altamira, just
besides the Cave. It has an exact replica of the Paintings Room of the
original Cave. This replica is visited with a guide in groups of about 30
people. This tours are held every 5-10 minutes in high season. The tickets
for this visit can be prebooked in either any '4B' ATM in Spain (there are
zillions of them), or in
https://www.bsch.es/Altamira/jsp/Fra...jsp?valor=BSCH (AFAIK in
Spanish only). Half of the tickets are not prebooked, but sold directly at
the booth in the Museum entrance. If you are going in a weekend or a
holiday, expect about two hours-long queues with no guarantees of getting a
ticket. As a reference, I went in a long weekend in 2002, arrived at the
queue at 10am, got my ticket at noon to visit the replica of the cave at
4:30pm. At the booth only tickets for that day can be purchased, no sell in
advance.

The Website of the Museum (with English version):
http://museodealtamira.mcu.es/indexprova.html

"Lasse" wrote in message
om...
"PTRAVEL" wrote in message
...
My wife has been enticing me to visit the Cantabria area of Spain this
month
by dangling a visit to Altamira Cave. Now we've learned that there's a
FOUR
YEAR waiting list. I'm hoping that, because of the time of year, there
may
be some openings, perhaps cancellations.

Does anyone have any experience getting to visit the cave on short
notice?

No chance. And you need to have a good reason to visit the caves, it's
not enough to just want to see the nice paintings.
But Cantabria is very nice and well worth a visit even without the
caves. The weather might be bad this time a year though.


Per the museum's website, the cave is open on a
first-reserved-first-admitted basis to 8,500 people per year. However, the
current waiting list is 4 years.


r/l

dont go there

santillana del mar is known as the village of the three lies:
1-ni es santa
2-ni es llana
3-ni tiene mar

"PTRAVEL" wrote in message
...

"Lasse" wrote in message
om...
"PTRAVEL" wrote in message
...
My wife has been enticing me to visit the Cantabria area of Spain this
month
by dangling a visit to Altamira Cave. Now we've learned that there's
a
FOUR
YEAR waiting list. I'm hoping that, because of the time of year,
there
may
be some openings, perhaps cancellations.

Does anyone have any experience getting to visit the cave on short
notice?

No chance. And you need to have a good reason to visit the caves, it's
not enough to just want to see the nice paintings.
But Cantabria is very nice and well worth a visit even without the
caves. The weather might be bad this time a year though.


Per the museum's website, the cave is open on a
first-reserved-first-admitted basis to 8,500 people per year. However,
the
current waiting list is 4 years.


r/l