Santiago de Compostela

This city is the end of one of the major Catholic pilgrimages. By the looks of this map, it just might be THE major pilgrimage. Here's a link that describes it better. I have a friend, Becky, who did it last year, and another friend, Rebekka, who will do it at some point in her life. What is it with the Rebecc(kk)as? I'd never thought of it before.
Anyway, the cathedral is the glorious end to a long walk for all of the pilgrims. Many of the pilgrims aren't Catholic, which is interesting. The Camino and the cathedral have a magnetism that is fascinating.
Getting to the cathedral you need to walk thru the streets of Old Santiago, where you are walking the same streets where millions of pilgrims have preceded you. It is really an amazing feeling. We came up to the cathedral from behind and that's when you realize how large it is. We circled around it and came into the square at the entrance of the cathedral where we saw about a dozen, maybe more, pilgrims. One really cool scene was the girl from Japan who saw some of the friends that she had made along the way, a man and woman from France, the were reunited and I got to take the picture of them. Becky had told me about these friendships that develop among fellow pilgrims. The cool thing was to see how happy they were to be together again, even though the only thing they had in common was about 7 English words. I snapped a picture of my friend, Fran, in the square. It was great to hang out with her. The one picture I wish that I had was the group of sextagenarian bicycling pilgrims. They were in spandex.
Galicia (the province where Santiago de Compostela is) happens to be VERY damp, so the cathedral has moss on it. It is awe inspiring, none the less. There's also a statue of St. James looking much the pilgrim.
One of the coolest traditions is the bonking of your head on a statue while steadying your right hand in the grooves in the pillar above it. Looking at how deep the grooves are. That's centuries and centuries of hands and heads. Supposedly you gain luck and the wisdom of the architect by so doing.
This picture is of the all-seeing eye that watches over the cathedral. The crane that you can see is of the gigantic incense thing that takes 8 men to swing across the cathedral. The eye, really, just reminded me of National Treasure, and that's why I took the picture. Or maybe it was foreshadowing National Treasure 2...?
And here's the sepulcher of St. James. This box purportedly houses the bones of St. James. Although, I hear that the bones of the headless person are actually female. It's easier to believe this if you're Mormon and know that James is resurrected.
This huge statue of St. James is directly above the sepulcher. You can go up into the box, but you're not allowed to take pictures inside, so I unfortunately don't have a better picture of the tons of jewels that adorn James' robe. You are allowed to give him a hug, although I was looking at the jewels and had my hands on his shoulders, so it looked much more like I was giving him a massage.
One of the best stories about the cathedral is of this statue that you can see immediately as you enter. It's really rare to see such a happy statue, especially in a cathedral. One time a bishop or cardinal or someone really important like that came in and looked at him then followed his gaze across the way and saw this woman. No big deal, right? Well, truth is that she was once much more, uh, well endowed. The bishop was so mad, that he demanded that her chest immediately be nearly flattened. But as a backlash, the Galicians created this cheese, called Queixo Tetilla. I had some while we were there. It's really good.
Outside of the cathedral, we went for lots of walks. On one of the buildings just across the street from the building behind Fran in the picture that you saw hangs this crown. I think that it looks like an octopus. Fran thought that I was a nerd for so thinking. What do you think?