Santiago...Sort of

The countryside through Northern Portugal and into Galicia, Spain is beautiful--roads wind through rolling tree-and-farm-covered hills; the coastline is dramatic and craggy with beautiful inlets and rocky islands offshore.  We got an early start after the delicious breakfast at our chance find outside Pont da Barca, Portugal and headed north to Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, my mom snapping a new picture every thirty seconds or so.

It was, as I say, a beautiful drive and not too long either.  Just over the Spanish boarder, we stopped for lunch in the small town of Gondomar: empanada gallega, pimientos de padrón, tortilla de papas, ensalada mixta, y carne en salsa.  What a culinary relief to be back in España!  I stuffed myself and smiled the whole time.  The food in Portugal was good and our seafood meal in Lavra might very well have been the best meal of the whole trip, but there's nothing like coming "home" to the foods you know after travelling.  The four of us ate until we could eat no more and even with drinks included the bill was under forty euros!

From Gondomar we headed onward and upward (on the map, anyway).  As usual, we got a bit turned around when it came time to find our hostal for the night.  We weren't actually staying in Santiago and so when we found ourselves headed toward Santiago "centro urbano" we pulled over and asked for directions...thankfully, this time all parties concerned spoke Spanish so things were much less confusing. ;)

Around six in the evening we found our hostal in Logrosa, a tiny little town outside Negreira, Galicia.  After the day's drive we were too tired for much exploring, though my mom and I did wander around Negreira a bit while we waited for the pizzas we'd ordered for dinner.  We also enjoyed some light tapas and a glass of wine each. ;)

Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia

The next day was Sunday and the plan was to go to mass at the Cathedral in Santiago.  Santiago is the destiation of one of the most famous pilgrimages in Christian history.  In the Middle Ages, Santiago was second only to Rome and Jerusalem.  But given the dangers involved with a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the midst of the Crusades, many people chose to visit Santiago.  The remains of Saint James are said to burried in the cathedral and pilgrims who made their way to Santiago were given a "compostela" which was an official pardon of all sins authorized by the Pope.  Centuries ago, weathly noblemen would pay servants to do the pilgrimage in their name and thus achieve the coveted pardon of the Church.

Bela and Me outside the cathedral.

Today, thousands of people still make the pilgrimage to Santiago and the roads along the way are covered with the iconic yellow shells that indicate the route to walkers and cyclists.  The history of Santiago has shaped Galician development for centuries.  Monestaries and villages, therefore, have sprung up over the years all within walking distance from one another and along the main routes to Santiago.  The Galician open, welcoming attitude towards foreigners is also something deeply rooted in the culture.  Albergues (cheap hostals) are a dime a dozen.  Even the smallest of villages has one or two.  And if there's no room, many times travellers are diverted to school gymnasiums or other such shelter for the night.  A friend of mine who has done the camino twice now even says that you can find vending machienes set up in the middle of fields (plugged into barns or garages) along the way for pilgrims to get a cool drink!  We saw many walkers with back-packs full to bursting, walking sticks in hand and the pilgrim's clam shell hanging off the pack.

The Sunday, tweleve o'clock mass is the Pilgrim's mass.  A cathedral full of sweaty, un-showered pilgrims can be a bit smelly and so it is tradition in Santiago to "purify" the cathedral by swinging a giant incense burner--113lbs!  Eight men raise the burner by means of a pulley system and swing it in front of the apse and perpendicular to the nave of the cathedral--if you think of a cross, the burner (botafumeiro in Spanish) would swing along the arms, parallel to the ground.



My mom and I really wanted to see the botafumeiro, which has obviously become quite the tourist attraction.  We were lucky to be allowed in at the last minute after standing in line in the hot, morning sun (something as rare in NW Spain as it is the NW of the United States!...even in summer) for at least a good twenty-five minutes.  We squeezed as close as we thought polite (the chuch seemed dangerously full, despite guards who regulated entrance), and held our cameras up as the Bishop of Santiago's words trailed off into the thunder of organ chords and the tradition commenced.  I'm glad we didn't miss it.

Galicians insist on changing the Spanish signs into their native tongue.

Unfortunately, our time in Santiago was very poorly spent.  It was unusually hot during our visit, which made sight-seeing and touring around unpleasant.  In short, we opted to do very little of that.  After mass we wanted to eat, but against our better judgement ended up getting sucked into one of the expensive restaurants that crowd the narrow, medieval streets, winding around the cathedral like a labyrinth.  This particular place lured us in with a shaded table in the outdoor seating area (remember we had the dog).  This was the most expensive meal of our whole trip: 60 euros; a drink a piece included.  You might think that sounds reasonable, but the dishes were extremely small and we decided not to order more food because it was so outrageously priced.  I was hungry after lunch--not a pretty picture.

To top things off, of course these labrinthine streets were home to MANY small shops selling all manner of touristy things that were painfully irresistable to my shop-a-holic mother.  For a second time, we forced her to shop at race-pace, something she is loathe to do, and then decided (once again, perhaps against better judgement) to take a round-about way back to the car along a river-path that the information desk had advised was a nice walk.  It was TOO hot.  We made it back to the car hot, sweaty and grumpy.  In the end, we were so zapped from our sunny little jaunt through Santiago that we didn't even have energy to look for a swimming hole to cool off in.  Instead, we headed back to the hostal and napped until around five.

This is how Bela spent nearly every lunch from Portugal to Extremadura!

We spent the evening in Negreira.  My mom and I showed Angelines and my dad the little tapas place we'd found the night before and we ended up having a very nice dinner.  So the day wasn't a complete waste, but given that it was the only full day we would have in Santiago (and in Galicia for that matter), we did a very poor job of time management.

In hindsight, it's easy to see that we just decided to pack too many things and too many kilometers (over 3,000 in the end!) into too little time.  We had originally planned our itenerary for two weeks on the road, but Angelines and I decided that closing the bar for more than one weekend wasn't a good idea.  When we suddenly cut our vacation time in half, we should have re-planned our driving route, but we didn't.  The end result was that much of what we saw was seen from the car, and there were times we just couldn't stop because we had to get to where we'd be staying for the night.

The bottom line is that Galicia and Santiago deserve another, more relaxed visit.