Santiago de Compostela

Santiago de Compostela was my second stop in Spain, after Granada. My original reason for going to the little city was to see Galicia, in the northwest of Spain, above Portugal. Santiago is the largest city there, or at least the most visited, but despite this I felt after one day that I had seen it all and felt a bit bored. Santiago was breathtakingly beautiful, but most tourists there are pilgrims and it is not a particularly exciting city for the lone young traveler. However I was glad to see a different version of Spain, one that was green and rainy and curiously Celtic, and also definitely authentic. I made a deliberate effort to take advantage of this quiet lull in my trip to rest up, slow down, and enjoy being alone and without an agenda.

Santiago de Compostela is the end point for pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago, which means the "way" or "walk". People walk from as far as northern Europe, though most start in France and cross through northern Spain to get to Santiago, and then sometimes make the short distance to end at the Atlantic coast at Finisterra, meaning "end of the earth". This pilgrimage is what Santiago is best known for, and walking around the winding stone streets of its old town you see a lot of people of all ages and nationalities wearing hiking boots and wearing large backpacks and carrying walking sticks with white sea shells hanging off them- the symbol of a pilgrim on El Camino. The hostel I stayed at for two nights was almost exclusively filled with pilgrims, so there wasn't much of a "youth hostel" culture. Thus I spent most of my time in Santiago wandering alone, circling the short route from the hostel through the old town, up and down narrow gray streets and through the large park again and again.

The official end of El Camino is at La Catedral de Santiago. It is the tallest building in Santiago and built like the majority of the buildings in the old town, with dark gray stone, covered in a beautiful gold moss with grass and plant life springing up on even the tallest edges of its walls. I prefered the outside to the very gaudy, excessively Catholic interior.

Evidence of Celtic influnce?

Sea shells above doors show hospitality to pilgrims:

One of the best things I ate in Spain was paella, a traditional Spanish rice dish that comes in many different variations, usually with fish, meat, or vegetables. One night in Santiago I had black rice paella, which had many different kinds of seafood and some veggies in rice with black squid ink. Delicious!

I heard these guys sing "Guantanamera" at least four or five times during my two day stay in Santiago:

Gallegos (people from Galicia) LOVE squid, called pulpo in Spanish. At an open-air market they were selling it fresh out of boiling water, chopped up with only some salt on top.

After almost a week of eating out, I was so happy to find an open-air market to buy some fresh produce. Sometimes all I want to eat is a whole pepper and some fruit. Not as impressive as Rotterdam's market, but still reeking of fish.

One day I went to El Museo de Pablo Gallego (the Museum of the Galician People) to get a better idea of the history of Galicia and how its culture differed from the rest of Spain, since I was so curious about the area because of its affinity to the British Isles and Celtic culture. Turns out Gallegos lived very similarly to the ancient Celtic peoples, with their proximity to the sea and living in a wet, green climate. Looking at models and photos of stone houses covered with straw roofs on rolling green hills I could have thought I was in Ireland. The Gallegos even play an instrument called a gaita which looks and sounds very similar to a bagpipe.

la gaita

Of course I delighted in seeing some centuries-old drop spindles (used to spin wool) and an old clay kick-wheel that doesn't actually look too different from the ones we use at camp. Hm.

Am I in Spain or Portugal?! You really couldn't tell by reading the texts in the museum. It was a whole new challenge trying to speak Spanish with people with such a thick Galician accent, sounding so much like Portuguese. It shows just how different the many regions of Spain are, with spelling and entire words changing from the traditional Spanish I learned in high school to a Spanish-Portuguese hybrid that I could only half-read.

Santiago was a delightful place to hear street musicians, who were everywhere and all very skilled. It was the kind of city where all you want to do is sit outside a cafe and drink coffee or sangria and be serenaded.

Another protest! I was surprised to happen upon one after the big LGBT rights protest in Köln, though after the fact I realized I'd forgotten that it was the first of May. I didn't get a good enough look at the signs to figure out what the group was protesting, in addition to my grasp of Spanish failing me a bit.

A famous sculpture of two old women who used to frequent the park in Santiago:

One of the highlights of Santiago was eating una torta de Santiago. It's a simple cake made with almond flour and dusted with sugar. I bought one and brought it to eat in the park, grinning with my tremendous sweet tooth and people-watching as I appreciated how incredibly green it was there. The leaves, the grass- anything not green was then covered in green moss. Santiago was a shady, cool and welcome respite from the Spain's usual dry heat.

 Another one of my favorite discoveries in Santiago was the gaita duo, one man on a gaita accompanied by a drummer. They played all day in this little tunnel, sounding like a combination of Celtic, Spanish, and Middle-Eastern music, sometimes making me want to step dance and sometimes salsa.