The Pilgimage Trail, part Two

8 October (Wednesday):

After breakfast we went next door and looked through the church and the Museum.  The church was nothing special but they had interesting things in the museum area.  

We managed to get out of Leon without getting lost - a major accomplishment!  The sky was mostly blue so we were happy.  We drove to Astorga, a town that has been a major stopping point on the Pilgrimage Trail for many centuries.  It was in Astorga that we think we discovered why something over-decorated is called 'gaudy'.  This town has a palace-style building, started in 1889 and finished in 1913, that has excessive amounts of tile and other decorations.  They are tasteful but just too much.  It was designed and built by a man whose last name is Gaudi.  The effect of his excesses is really quite remarkable.  The Cathedral was undergoing repairs and we didn't get to see inside but we did see the Porch with its archway totally covered in intricate, detailed carvings.  

From Astorga we drove into the hills on narrow back roads, some of which turned out t0 be wide and well kept.  Others were extremely bumpy and mostly too narrow for cars to pass.  The roads followed the Pilgrimage Trail so we saw a lot of people walking the trail, quite a few were biking, and one man had a donkey with him.  The road went through several small medieval looking towns that probably only survive by providing services to the pilgrims.  The road and trail went over a pass 1500 meters high.  I'm glad we were in a car!  We next took back roads to what are called 'Les Medules".  The Romans found gold in this area, back in the time of Julius Ceasar, or in that era.  They mined it by using water that they brought to the site by digging tunnels and canals, then placer mined the area.  What are left are amazing chunks of very red rocks.  You have to see the pictures to understand.  Some are taken from the bottom, some from the top.  The later are the spectacular ones.  You might notice in the pictures that by then the sky was totally cloudy with a lot of very dark patches.  We got lightly sprinkled walking back to the car - we had to hike 0.8 kilometres up a hill to see the rocks.  

From there we went to Villafranca del Bierzo where we stayed in another Parador (this one fairly new).  We had no sooner got settled in than it started to pour rain.  Our timing was perfect.

9 October (Thursday):

The storm had moved on by this morning and we had clear skies again.  Spain is far west of England but it goes on European time, an hour ahead of GMT.  We also have daylight savings time in effect so the sun doesn't rise until 8:30 am.  We don't get on the road until nearly 10 am, but that is the way everyone here lives.  We followed the Pilgrimage Trail again today - more back roads and scenic valleys.  The only town we stopped in was called Samos.  We stopped because I saw a sign that said there was something to see that dated back to the 9th Century.  I didn't know what it was because it was in Spanish but we were both ready to stretch our legs and walk a bit.  We drove almost to the other side of town to find a parking place, then had a good look at the Monastery that was right on the road.  It is huge.  (See the photo.)  We followed the sign I had seen and found a small chapel in the woods beside an ancient Cypress tree.  The chapel and the tree were both considered 9th Century.  It wasn't much to see but we enjoyed the walk.  We reached our destination of Lugo by about 1:30 and got settled into the largest hotel in town.  We then walked up the road to the town wall, and through a pedestrian gate.  Lugo is an old Roman town that still has a complete Roman walk-able wall.  A round trip is about 2 kilometers.  We went to a great restaurant for lunch (our main and final meal for the day).  We left there about 4:30 and walked around the wall to get a good view of the town.  It has a few nice buildings and a small area kept in the old style but a lot of the town inside the walls has bee rebuilt in modern style and really doesn't look good at all.  Outside the wall is between old and new and looks better than the new inside.  They have a lot of very nice stores in the heart of town but the areas near the wall are run down and grungy.  We don't know why, but the town must be celebrating something as every Plaza had some sound system set up and a band or something making music at extremely loud volume.  The one nearest out hotel was an orchestra and a large choir of older people, in ordinary clothes, nearly deafening me.  We assumed they were practicing.  Luckily we really don't hear anything from our room, even with the window open.

10 October (Friday):

Another clear sky today,but the valleys were full of fog.  It burnt off fairly soon.  We did our last piece of following the Pilgrimage Trail today.  We didn't follow it for much but drove through pretty country most of the day.  We ended up in Pontevedra, an old Port town that has had the harbour silted in by the river.  We checked into another Parador that is in an old building in the city centre that is on pedestrian only streets.  We were able to drive to the hotel and park in its small parking area where there was lots of room as last night's guests were still leaving.  By the end of the day the lot was full with 14 cars and only the last one could get out.  We will have to leave late tomorrow.  It's a good thing we won't be in a hurry.  We walked around the city to a highly rated (in the Michelin Rouge guide book) restaurant, Casa Roman.  We spent a couple of hours over lunch (everything is closed from 2 to 4, if not longer), then went walking around to the main places of interest which included a small museum in two old houses.  We arrived at the Cathedral just after 5:30 to find it didn't open until 6.  We walked down to the river and along the bank, then sat on a bench and watched the river traffic, mainly kids from a Yacht Club practicing in Kayaks, from one person to four people size.  After 6:00 we walked back to the Cathedral, paid our 1 Euro each and walked the 103 steps up the bell tower.  There were small museum rooms at a couple of levels on the way up.  At the top we had a great look at the bells but the view was of non-inspiring roofs.  Not worth a photo.

11 October (Saturday):

Our car was parked so that it was tricky to get it out of the over-filled parking area.  We had lots of time so after a late breakfast (late for us - lots of others were arriving as we finished) we went for a walk to find out how to drive to get where we wanted to go.  It was a good thing we did as we found a simple way out of the one-way mostly pedestrian streets.  By the time we drove off it was after 11 am.  We only had 53 kilometers to go and went on the toll road so we were in Santiago de Compostela well before noon.  

We found our way almost to the Parador but one-way streets prevented us from going where we thought we should.  We found a parking spot on a side street and walked to the Cathedral and the Parador, which is right beside the Cathedral. We check in and got a better map that showed us how to go from where we were parked up the same road, around a corner and into a parking lot.  We did that then rolled our luggage to the Parador and settled in.  All the streets and plazas were seething mobs of people.  We had to drive a bit on a pedestrian road to get to the parking lot and we had a hard time getting the people to move out of the way.  All the pilgrims go first to the square in front of the Cathedral (and the Parador) when they arrive, then they go into the church.  We moved with the throng into the church for a look at the Cathedral and the special items our guide book mentions.  The first thing was the West Doorway.  It was completely covered with scaffolding and we could see just a few bits of the famous stone carvings.  By now we have seen so many churches and cathedrals that only special ones affect us.  This one was just too much gold and glitter.  We were not really impressed by it at all.  We went from there to a small restaurant Hans had found in the Michelin Rouge book.  It was rated in the book with a happy face which means very good but not expensive.  The book said a complete meal cost 24 Euros.  It was just a block away so we went as soon as they were open to be sure we got a table.  We were the first there.  It was a fixed menu meal, lucky for me nothing had pork in it.  We were served an 'Amuse Bouche' which was delicious but even though the girl told us what it was we never found out.  Mushroom soup was next, then fresh sardines.  Fourth was tuna and tomato, fifth a very tasty piece of white fish.  Sixth was a medium rare veal steak with potato.  Following all this protein came a palate-cleanser that we really didn't know what part of it was.  There was fresh pineapple ice cream with a sauce and fair amount of a frozen substance that was like a pile of small hail stones.  It tasted wonderful.  Then came desert!  It was some sort of puff pastry and cream custard that was a grand finale.  The price in the guide book was well out of date - the meal cost us 60 Euros each, plus wine, water and taxes.  This was by far the most expensive meal we have had on this trip but it was worth it.

After lunch we struggled back up the hill to the Cathedral and had another look at a few things we had missed, then walked through the old town to a museum in on old Convent.  The museum was a history of the people of the area, Galicia.  They are of Gaelic decent and they play bag-pipes that show the connection to the Gaelic people of Scotland.  One fellow plays his (for money) right near our room, out where most Pilgrims pass, and is driving Hans crazy.  We spent a long time at the museum, then went to a contemporary art museum across the street,  It certainly had contemporary art.  A lot of the works were pieces of string hung from the ceiling, maybe some partial balls around the floor, maybe just a couple of dots on the wall behind the strings.  Everything was three dimensional and they had no appeal to me at all.  Back we came to our room to rest up ready for another day of incredible crowds.

12 October (Sunday):

A bit cloudy this morning but not at all cold.  We walked over to a very large park and went around it.  The park is the top of a hill next to the main town hill.  From it you get excellent views of the city.  From the park we carried on going out of town, heading for a small church that dates from the 12th Century and looks strange because in the 18th Century they added buttresses to it.  When you go inside you see why they put up the buttresses - the weight of the ceiling vaulting was causing the inside pillars to spread apart.  The pillars are visibly angled out, away from the centre.  Hans took a picture but the slant doesn't show up so the picture is not included in the Gallery.  We walked on, went into another museum (as Canadians we don't have to pay for most of the museums - nice treatment of tourists).  We returned to the Parador to rest a bit after walking for two and a half hours.  We were both tired.  I lay down and fell asleep.  Hans napped sitting up in a chair.  We woke in time to go to another nice restaurant for lunch - arrived after three pm.  This restaurant should have had the Happy Face as it was very good and the whole meal - three courses for each of us plus 1 litre of water, half a bottle of red wine (for Hans) and an expresso coffee totaled 55 Euros.  After that we had to walk for another couple of hours to work off all the food.  We have now seen everything of interest to us in Santiago and we have one more whole day here.  But we have a plan.

13 October (Monday):

 We woke to a totally cloudy day.  After being assured by the staff here that it was not going to rain, we set our plan into action.  We took a taxi to La Vacolla, a town 9 kilometers away, on the Pilgrimage. Trail.  The taxi driver dropped us off where the trail leaves the centre of La Vacolla and we started our walk.  We were walking in the fog.  We stayed in the clouds for most of the walk.  No views.  The guide sheet for the tour we had signed up for but was cancelled said the walk into Santiago was up hill for the first hour, then down hill for two hours.  We finished the up hill part in 25 minutes, then the mostly downhill remainder in an hour and a half so the whole walk was just over two hours.   We came into Santiago on streets we had not yet been on but they all look very much the same in the old town.  We went to a near-by restaurant for lunch, not expecting it to be great as the best restaurants are closed on Monday.  Surprise!  They handed us the same menu we had yesterday.  The two restaurants have the same owner and we had a repeat excellent meal for even less money than yesterday.  We spent the afternoon looking at the photos Hans' took in the last few days.  We really have to go over them sooner - we don't remember what the first ones on the film are pictures of!  Now I am getting everything ready to send to you as this ends the Pilgrimage Trail section of the trip.  We only have 9 more days to see the north coast of Spain and get back to Frankfurt for the flight home.