day 5 - Santiago de Compostela

Cathedral of Saint James de Compostela

We slept late today. I was hearing Spanish conversations in my head last night and had a hard time falling asleep. After a nice breakfast of bread, Jamon and Queso (now three different kinds) we got in the car and headed toward Santiago de Compostela. It's a beautiful old medieval city, all about the pilgrimages that Catholics do for some (to me) obscure reason. To get blessings, I think. We saw some pilgrims, a lot of them standing in a long line to get their pilgrimage cards officially stamped. You are allowed to make the pilgrimage on foot, by horseback, or by bicycle. You can tell who the Pilgrims are because they carry staffs and hang scallop shells from their backpacks. We haven't figured out why the scallop shells. Car doesn't count but I have to wonder how many people cheat. So the story is that the remains of Saint James, one the original twelve apostles, were brought to Santiago de Compostela after he was martyred in Jerusalem . His remains were supposedly discovered here in 814 AD and the city became a pilgrimage site. It is now a World Heritage Site. This is a photo of the Cathedral of Saint James (Sant Iago, also known as Sankt Jacob and San Diego.) In the Cathedral we saw the container of the original Staff (or so they say) of Saint James. We didn't stand in the line to hug the statue of Saint James or see his sarcophagus. After a nice lunch outdoors on a pleasant small plaza where I had Oysters and the most amazing dessert they called cheesecake but was really a flan made of some kind of fresh cheese, we walked through the town to the Museum of the Galician People. They had a lot of exhibits of the traditional Galician way of life, old musical instruments, old sailboats, old costumes, and models of old farmhouses. It would take many days to do Santiago de Compostela justice, there is an awful lot to see there. Mostly churches and monasteries. But the architecture is gorgeous.