We escaped Porto this morning with only a SNAFU at the parking garage – the payment machine didn’t give us the ticket needed to exit. We navigated morning Porto traffic, hit the A3 and made our way across the Spanish border and into Santiago de Compostela.
I’m proud of myself for choosing a hotel so close to the cathedral – literally a block (OK, so it’s a block UPhill). The last mile reminded us of our approach to our hotel in Florence, Italy a number of years ago. That’s the time I almost ran over the same group of Japanese tourists three times. Not because they moved. It took us three tries around the Duomo before finding our hotel’s street. This time Google didn’t know one-way streets and streets closed to autos, but we found the second-best parking garage and hoofed it (uphill) to our hotel. It’s really a complex of apartments and in our case a standalone efficiency unit. The complex of six or so units has a very plain front door on the street but opens up in the back to a very pleasant garden.
Then the bad news: Our hostes Veronica told us the Cathedral is closed. It seems the powers that be are taking a lesson from Notre Dame in Paris. They are dealing with humidity and structural issues, it seems, to make sure the cathedral doesn’t catch fire or fall down from its own weight. We actually did get in later on in the afternoon but all we could catch were glimpses of the cathedral among the miles of scaffolding and huge sheets of plastic put in place to protect the structure and its decorations. It’s a huge undertaking.
The other bad news: tomorrow is Ascension Day; the day Christ rose to heaven. It’s a big festival here. While we were checking in Veronica’s mom called to tell her to be sure to do all her shopping today because all the stores will be closed tomorrow. Veronica: eye roll and “Yes, Mama. Of course, Mama. I’ll call you later, Mama,” Moms and daughters are the same everywhere. I did hear a band doing a sound check on a stage near the cathedral, preparing for a concert tonight. The drummer all by himself will be loud enough to raise the dead, so maybe it’s part of the celebration of the religious holiday, you think?
Oh yes, it’s going to rain tomorrow. Thunderstorms.
Any regret that we aren’t spending more than one day here evaporated.
Santiago de Compostela – the cathedral of St. James the Great – had its start in 813 A.D. when legend has it, a shepherd saw a star in the night sky under which the remains of St. James were being buried. The bishop ordered a chapel to be built and soon the site become the terminus of a pilgrimage in honor of St. James. Like everywhere else around these parts there is a history of Roman settlements, followed by Visigoths and others, Moors from Arabia, the Crusades, the French, and so on. The details are much more complex than that, but you get the drift. Nonetheless, the tradition of pilgimige in honor of St. James continued throughout.
We happened to meet two girls waiting at our hotel to retrieve their bags, which they thought had been left here. We called Veronica; it turned out that the bags were in the building next door. While we waited, we learned that the girls were from New Zealand, so we had a great time talking about our experiences in their country. They were envious: they had never been on Doubtful Sound as we had done with our overnight cruise.
One of the girls had just completed the 791 km pilgrimage from St. Jean Pied de Port, France to Santiago de Compostela, a trip that typically takes 30 to 40 days. Our new Kiwi friend told us she hiked an average of 18 Km per day but did several 40 Km (24 mile) days. Her friend joined her for the last two days and while not a big hiker on this trip she has climbed Katahdin and has crewed on a yacht in the Caribbean, so she’s used to the outdoors.
It was interesting to see in the square in front of the cathedral large numbers of hikers and bikers who had obviously just completed the pilgrimage or at least some portion of it. The scene reminded me a bit of the posed pictures people take at the top of Mt Katahdin: trekking poles in the air: “I made it Mom!” They joined a long history of pilgrims, dating to the 10thcentury. I found one web site that offers the complete trip from $4,780, plus extras such as extra nights along the way in case you get tired or want to explore Burgos or other towns along the way.
It’s been a somewhat slow day touring wise. We didn’t get settled in our room until 2:00 PM. We toured and got some vittles and were napping by 6:00 PM. Somehow, I’ve managed to log 11,000 steps and 4.8 miles, climbing 18 flights in that short interval.
Speaking of vittles, we arrived at the market just as it was closing but did find one kiosk selling cheese. We had a fun time talking in broken English and Spanish and ended up with three kinds of cheese. I thought maybe one lady was the mother the other the daughter. Turns out the “mother” is from Venezuela and the “daughter” from Italy. They got a big hoot out of that one. The “mom” offered me 50 Euros for my watch when I used it on her credit card terminal to make the purchase. How we’re going to eat all that cheese is beyond me. Maybe Enrique will help us in Madrid.
The plan for this evening is to go for tapas. Veronica has given us four tapas places where they give you a free tapas to start, with the expectation that you’ll purchase a drink and more tapas. We’ll see how far down this gastronomic path we’ll get. I’m still feeling a bit guilty, caloric wise, after Portugal. But when in Rome . . .
**** 11:00 PM ****
We’re back from our tapas run but were only partially successful. We got a late start: nap time ended on Portuguese time so we didn’t get to the venue until after 9 PM. Also, we spent extra time looking for the places that Veronica had recommended. We never did find any of the four. We finally settled on a spot where we had mussels (quite good) and the Spanish version of our Chilean favorite: empanadas. A glass of wine topped it off.
We found the concert: no idea who was singing or what they were singing but the crowd was large, loud, very much into it and having lots of fun. I’ll post a very very very small (tiny) video clip to hopefully give you an idea. After, we closed up a tapas shop with a serving of Spanish flan (the world’s best, according to Judy) and green tea.
Tomorrow a longish (3:30) drive to the home town of Jovellanos, the 18thcentury philosopher who was the subject of Mom’s PhD dissertation and published book.
