Friday, November 20th 2009
Everyone thought Lisa and I were crazy for going to Santiago de Compostela for just one day, but since we took the night train there and the night train back it was a full and worthwile day. The night train wasn’t so bad, it was long (nine hours) but supposedly being asleep makes it seem shorter (though I didn’t sleep much on the way there).
Santiago de Compostela (Santiago = James in english) is the end of the famous Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route that starts in the south of France. According to tradition, the apostle James traveled through Spain and evangelized to a Spanish queen, and died in Santiago de Compostela. People now take the month-long trek and end up there, but we just took a train and skipped the long walk.
First we went to a market will all sorts of fruit, fish and meat. The fish was extremely fresh, there were shrimp that were still jumping around, big (whole) fish and slimy squid. They had whole pigs hanging with the heads at the bottom and skinned hare.

After that we went to the cathedral, the main to-do in Santiago. We wandered around the cathedral somewhat aimlessly for some time, noticing the mystic feel of the place. I was looking for the Portico mentioned in Rick Steeve’s book and we meandered into something we thought was the cathedral museum. We asked how much it cost and they said it wasn’t the museum but they had a free tour in about five minutes.

Not being in a hurry to get anywhere we sat down and watched a film about the restoration of the portico. After that she said we were going to see the portico and opened a case full of hard hats. We had no idea what was going on, but put the hats on and followed. We went back into the cathedral and up scaffolding to the portico. Being under restoration its impossible to see from the ground, but up on the scaffolding we were about 5 feet away from the carvings of musicians and religious figures.
After that we saw the carving of Saint James that pilgrims traditionally hit their head against to gain wisdom from the saint but is now closed off to protect from wear. Then we went back outside we met a pilgrim! He asked us to take a picture and told us that he had done the whole walk and it had taken him 32 days.
We were hoping to see the Botafumeiro during the pilgrims’ mass but knew it was a ritual done only 20 something times a year. But we got lucky! The botafumeiro is filled with incense and swung across the cathedral. It was incredible and lucky to see it!

After lunch we realized there wasn’t really much left to do. We wandered around various museums, none of which were particularly interesting and which for the most part were primarily in the gallego language… But we did find a triple spiral staircase and raced cars down the virtual streets of Santiago.
We took the night train back and I tried calling David, unbeknownst to me that he choose not to answer because he would be able to explain the noise of the airport…