City Sightseeing Santander Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour

No buses were running on Friday, April 21, 2023. I want a refund for the tickets TripAdvisor sold me.

We had never done a hop on-hop off before but we thought we’d give it a go - it was a great way to get a sense of the city. We only “hopped off” twice - once at the lighthouse and once at Magdalena Peninsula, but we enjoyed being able to see different neighbourhoods, architecture, landmarks, etc. The bus comes about every 40 minutes so you have lots of time to see the things around each stop. At Magdalena we took the train up to the palace and then chose to walk down - I recommend this if you aren’t into hiking up a big hill :). It worked out very well. They offer audio tours in multiple languages - you plug in headphones into the bus/train to access the audio. The only problem we encountered was that the connection did not always work. On the bus I had a good connection but my husband didn’t, and on the train it was the opposite. Also, on the train, the driver does an overview in Spanish over the intercom, which made it very hard to hear the English translation over the headphones.

Do NOT use the Hop On Hop Off from the Santander cruise terminal. We arrived unexpectedly in Santander, Spain due to a ship diversion. We thought it would be nice to get an overview of the city and then select a museum to see. When we got off the ship, there was a Hop On Hop Off stop. There was a person with a mobile credit card machine and we paid 40 Euro for 2. After we purchased and got in line, we found out that there was a number on our receipt/ticket. After about a half hour, the bus came. And so did a whole bunch of people with lower numbers who were put in front of us in line. They had been told to "go have a coffee or something and come back later." We had number 28. We couldn't get on the bus because it was full. We were told we would have to wait another hour for the next bus, and that if enough people didn't get off, we wouldn't be able to get on that bus either. AND it is Spain so the bus doesn't run from 1:00 to 2:30 we were advised. It was 11:00 a.m. by this point. We asked for our money back but we were told the ticket was non-refundable. We walked to the Maritime Museum, which was a bit of a hike (and recommended). We got nothing but aggravation and lost time standing in line for our 40 Euros.