I'll finish up some Madrid stuff later...probably closer to the end of the semester or when I get home (in just over two weeks!). I still need to catch up about a couple of the trips I still haven't talked about...the first was on Halloween weekend to Santiago de Compostela!
Santiago de Compostela is in the Galicia region of Spain. It is near the northwest coast...I was really surprised, after seeing the dry, brown land that surrounds Madrid and extends into southern Spain, to see such green and densely forested land that was still in the same country! It is supposed to look like Ireland and I guess that's appropriate because Galicia is one of the places where the Gaelic (Galician=Gaelic) people came from. I know that my grandmother's maiden name is Spain and I believe that we've figured out that that is Irish and used to be Spanish (de Spain...from Spain). So Elise and I took a weekend trip to the land of our ancient ancient ancestors!
Santiago is also famous because it is the end of the Camino de Santiago (journey/walk of St. James). He walked from somewhere in France all the way to the northwest coast of Spain. Today, hundreds of pilgrims do the Camino every year...we saw several throughout town with their giant backpacks, thick beards, walking sticks, and shells on their backpacks to signify the number of times they've finished the Camino. We took the hour flight from Madrid on a Friday morning and got to our hostel early that afternoon. I had been feeling pretty sick and weak for a couple of days, so we both napped and then started to walk around the city (not a big one!) to find the old town and a place to eat. I didn't have much of an appetite (so if you know me, you know that I was feeling VERY sick), but we stopped at a place where I got tea and a little pastry to get some energy. There was a beautiful garden in the old town, as well as winding streets and great little shops. We even got to listen to two great tenors singing in the street...they were fantastic! The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela is the main reason people go...it is giant! Gorgeous cathedral and one of the most interesting bits of info is that they have a giant, ancient air freshener (incense, I'm sure) that hangs over the pews because of the stench that the pilgrims gave off after their trek. That night, Elise and I went to dinner and got the local specialties -- pulpo de gallega (octopus tentacles!), shrimp, and pimientos de padron (fried little green peppers), and some great Galician wine. It was a great dinner (I wish I could have eaten more, but my stomach was still struggling) and we were certainly entertained by the lobster tank that we sat next to!
The next morning, we headed to the bus station to catch a bus for a few hours to Fisterre or Finisterre. It was known by the Romans as the end of the world (Fini=end, terra=earth) because it's about as far West in Europe as you can go (I think one city in Portugal may actually be a bit further, but you get the picture). We were on the bus with a bunch of stinky pilgrims (never thought I'd say that), but they were entertaining and we ended up finding one of the cloudiest, foggiest days...but it made the coastline look all the more like it truly was the end of the world. It was a pretty lousy day (rainy and chilly), but we had a good time walking around the town, getting a bite to eat (some of the biggest and best shrimp I've ever had) and enjoying the scenery and the fishing village together. That night (Halloween), we forgot our costumes (unless we were trying to look like American students studying abroad and taking a weekend trip, in that case, we nailed it) and were exhausted from the week, so we called it an early night, found a Domino's pizza for a taste of home and awaited our early morning flight the next day.
Flew back to Madrid to great weather, but it was really fantastic to get to Santiago, see some very interesting sights and enjoy the green landscape that reminded us both a lot of North Carolina!
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