Beautiful Santiago de Compostela!

 

Hola!  (You see, I’m already back to Spanish; haven’t said “obrigado” in … hours!)

Up this morning at what seemed our usual time, but turns out that I had forgotten to change my alarm clock back (or forth…whatever) the hour that is different from Portugal.  So, when we went for breakfast at 7:30 am, it really was already 8:30 am here in Spain.  Oh well!  Fortunately, today wasn’t a really heavy touring day.  Our plan was to go into town, see the Cathedral and whatever other sights are normally seen, and that was about it.  So … down to breakfast at 8:30 and it was quite lovely!  The food was good, and the selection excellent.  I really like quince paste; it goes really well with Manchego cheese, and they had quite a pot of it in their cheese and cold cut area.  Also fresh grapefruit juice – always a plus in my book!

The two towers of the Cathedral

Chilly morning, but spring flowers are doing their best!

Cathedral

Doing restoration

Lots of gold everywhere...

A beautiful side chapel

Love fresco on the wall

Me, hot chocolate & R's coffee!

R and his friendly little cookie!

Beautiful porticos

I think this is the cross of St. James on pastry

Local market

Great carving on wall outside of market

Me having snacks

And at the laundry!

This gal is on our floor!

Then upstairs to collect maps and information on not only getting into Santiago de Compostela, but where to park, etc.  However, as we got to the end of the road that our lovely hotel is on, there – right in front of us – waiting for us, actually! – was a BUS!  Yeah! (We do love to take local buses.) Turns out that the #8 was going right down through the central historic part of town, so we quickly parked the car in a nearby carpark (20 feet away) and on the bus we went!  All of 1€each, if you can believe it!  (I’m sure it would have cost more than a couple of Euros to park in town!)  And soon, we were busing our way into town!  We weren’t exactly sure where to get off the bus, but a very nice gentleman leant us some assistance, so that we got off at the right place – the street closest to the Cathedral – and explained via our maps how to get there. 

At this point, we were standing right in front of a big Santander bank (which is I think the biggest Spanish bank) ATM machine.  Rwas able to get 400€ (yes! – wonder why Portugal has a 200€ daily limit) easily, and then we went into the bank and asked a nice lady if she would verify on our map exactly where we were, so we would have no problems getting back to catch another bus.

So…now, with Euros in hand, we headed toward the Cathedral.  First off, I must say that it was VERY chilly this morning; somewhere in the low 50’s, I think.  I did have my coat and scarf but unfortunately not my gloves.  I will definitely remedy that mistake tomorrow morning!  The weather forecast gave only an 8% probability of rain, so we also decided to do without our umbrellas.  (Again, always chancy, but we managed to avoid the rain entirely – not thanks to us, however – it just never rained today, in spite of getting really dark in the early afternoon.)

Reached the Cathedral, and truly, from the outside it is spectacular.  However, upon walking inside, we were basically met with total and complete scaffolding and restoration work going on!  Turns out, they have been renovating the Cathedral since 2013. Scaffolding was actually initially supposed to come down during March 2018, but … duh … they missed that date. To date more than 9.2 Million Euros has been spent.  From what we could see, they are nowhere close to finishing.  During this time, they have had the daily mass for pilgrim’s in a side chapel, and all other masses and activities have been moved to other churches.  Incredible! But, after all, the building was started in 1168, so maybe it istime for some maintenance.  This obviously must be a sign that not only do we need to come back to go to the Foz Coa Museum, we now also have to come back to see the Cathedral without scaffolding!  Whew!

Apparently one of the things that pilgrim’s routinely do is to walk up behind the large statute of St. James and give it a hug.  This is still available for all to do.  We also did visit the daily mass for pilgrim’s as well.  

From the Cathedral, we needed to find a bathroom (this is definitely truth in blogging…) so decided the easiest way would be to have something hot to drink somewhere near.  So, right across the plaza we were able to get all our needs met – lovely cup of hot chocolate for me, what was reputed to be American coffee for Robert, along with two little cookies; great fun!  R wanted a knife and fork for the coffee.

From there, we had been told by the gal at the hotel reception that the Mercado in town was very interesting.  So, we headed there, winding around through little streets and alleys – great fun, truthfully!  I’m not sure if I explained yesterday, but the symbol of St. James is the scallop shell, which you see everywhere in Compostela.  They are on the manhole covers in the street, and on t-shirts and backpacks galore.  We were even able to spot a few newly arrived pilgrims in one of the shops.  Their packs had scallop shells mounted to them, and they had extendable hiking poles like our friend Katy uses, as well.  We have been told that some people prefer the old-fashioned wooden staff instead, but we rather preferred the contemporary method.

Finally located the market and walked through it – I skipped the fish part, which Robert loved, but everything else was enjoyable.

It was now somewhere about 2 pm, so we decided to see if we could find a bus back to our hotel.  And we did!  Really, there was an unmarked bus stop right across the street from where we got off – we figured that all buses heading that way stopped there, even if they weren’t marked on any signage, so we found our bus back with no trouble!  And, 15 minutes later, we were back at the hotel!

Decided that, as we had had breakfast so late, rather than have a big lunch, we would get a glass of wine and some snacks and try and stay awake until the hotel’s restaurant opens up at 8:30 pm tonight.  (UGH!) However, every good trip should include some suffering, so that’s what we’re doing!  We got a lovely bottle of wine at the bar/café (Robert’s favorite, Tempranillo, again) along with chips, sausages and olives. 

While we were debating our next move, it occurred to me that possibly, as we had a couple of hours to ourselves, what could be more fun and exciting that doing another load of LAUNDRY! Nothing, right?!  (It was either that or do it as soon as we get to Gijon tomorrow.)  So, upstairs to collect everything, and ascertain the closest laundry that we felt could do the trick!  There were quite a few downtown in the City, but I figured that it would be easier to get to/from if we looked for something a bit more out this way. So, found one about 7 driving minutes away, and it was fabulous!  It’s actually incorporated into a small shopping mall – several floors, with a gym and a restaurant, as well as a big grocery store.  The laundry was deserted and had three lovely washing machines of different sizes, as well as three large dryers!  And, the washing only took 29 minutes, rather than the almost hour it had taken in Porto!  So, now we are all clean and dry again, and back at the hotel! I’m blogging, and then will probably take a nap, as I need to stay awake for dinner tonight!!

Oh!  One other thing!  I had been thinking about how to make reservations for the Atapuercaexcavation site out of Burgos, especially as some of the books talked about needing to reserve in advance.  As my Spanish is pretty much non-existent, I was a bit concerned. However, I emailed the Museum in Burgos today, and now we are all signed up for our special tour of the Archaeological site on Sunday, March 24^th! Very excited!!

So, definitely more later!

m

xxx