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?

Lucky Comedy of Errors

The last few days of our trip have been a comedy of errors with very nice results.
On Wednesday we left Braga and headed to Vigo to pick up my friend Fran. We left late which was already a problem. It was pretty obvious that we changed the border into Spain. There was a stark difference because northern Portugal isn't as bustly as southern Galicia. Anyway we stayed on the road to Vigo and suddenly ended up right where we needed to be in the middle of Vigo. It was so shocking that I thought that we were in the wrong place. We didn't see Fran so we turned off the roundabout to double check. On the way back up we saw Fran walking down the street. So we grabbed her and headed off to Santiago de Compostela.
The cathedral in Santiago is amazing. I don't know if I'll be able to post pictures for a bit, just trust me that it was beautiful. The three of us spoke in a hybrid of English, Spanish, Galego and Portuguese. The nice thing is that we understood each other the whole time.
After we got to the hotel Fran and I decided to go on a walk and look for more yogurt since the amount we'd already had that day just wasn't enough. But as we were leaving, the receptionists at the hotel told us that it was 10pm. I looked at my watch and said that no, it was 9pm. They smiled and said, no, son las diez. Did you know that the time changes from Portugal to Spain? Hmmph. Fran had been waiting for two hours, not one. I felt terrible. But this also meant that we'd been off by an hour all day. So funny. A little bit later I dropped her off in the middle of the city with a friend of hers and said goodbye. It was sad. She's the bomb.
The next morning (Thursday) I had tons of cheese and yogurt for breakfast. Clark makes fun of me for this. I eat on average 3 yogurts a day. Today I had more.
Anyway, Dad and I headed to Bilbao which was a LONG drive. But it was GORGEOUS. We drove along the Bay of Biscay for most of it. Oh my was it beautiful. We finally got into Bilbao and then drove around and around and around and had no idea how to get down to the Guggenheim. We gave up. It was a mess. So we decided to find our hotel which was in a neighboring city. We couldn't find the exit, but we did see an exit for Gernika-Lomo. Most of you have heard of this place because of the painting of the terrible bombing by Hitler's forces in 1937. So we decided to take a detour. We were happy to see that the city was a normal small town. So we doubled back and then finally found the city that had our hotel. But we couldn't find the hotel. We drove and drove and drove and drove in circles and more circles. We asked people, they told us and then we drove and drove and drove around this really nice, small Basque town. We finally stopped at a restaurant that was closing, but the owner still fed us anyway. I had calimari. Yep, I ate squid. But I didn't eat the pig's face. Nor did Clark. It still had hair on it. Blech. The owner, José, was wonderful. He and his girlfriend led us to the hotel later. So wonderful.
The next morning we tried to get to the freeway toward Vitoria. [We changed our plans and bagged France. :'( ] But we couldn't figure out how to get to the other side of the freeway. Then suddenly we were at the Guggenheim. So our comedy of lucky errors continued and we got to see the Guggenheim. So funny. This is how our whole trip has been.
Then we left for Zaragoza. But then I convinced Dad to push a little bit more to Lérida. By now I was driving and I told him that we might as well head to Barcelona. So we're here now. I'm very happy. I like it here a lot. This is going to give us more time in Barcelona, so I'm glad I was able to convince Clark that driving for 2 days in a row would be worth it. This has turned into an Iberian road trip. I think I'm enjoying it more than he is, though. Well, at least the driving.
I'm sure that there's more to report. But he's waiting for me downstairs and he's really hot because it's nice and muggy here: just the way I like it. :D
I'm really happy. Hopefully I'll get to post more pictures soon.
Love you all.
J'aime l'Espagne!!!!

2 minutes to do this

Found my friend Fran. Almost by chance, actually. It was great to hang out with her. She's the bomb.
We made it to Santiago de Compostela via the back roads which was cool. The cathedral is AMAZING. We hung out, went to some old tombs that don't exist anymore. Went back to the cathedral. I bought a book and a Galego-Castillano dictionary. Came back to the hotel. Then realized that time changes from Portugal to Spain. We were an hour off all day. Who knew.
We've changed our travel plans. I'll write more later.
Gotta go. Time's gone
love you all!!!