A wonderful mail delivery

Hello, everyone.

A couple of days ago we had a wonderful mail delivery: (Blogger refuses to allow me to upload the photo!)

Sadly I cannot show you the picture of the two new (current-year) Camino Frances guides. Blogger is messed up and will not let me upload a photo. It keeps hanging up in google docs...which is not where the picture is!

You know, the old Blogger worked fine most of the time. It never gave me problems with uploading photos. It never gave me problems with putting links in the posts either. And I didn't have to interpret strange symbols to begin composing a new post. 

It's ridiculous!

We got our new guide books for the Camino. These were new ones because the last time we walked the Camino Frances was 2014. (And with the China plague this spring, we had to postpone our Via de la Plata walk that would have begun right after Easter.) We decided to see if we could do a slightly shorter one later on, when Spain is again ready for visitors. We ordered the new Camino Frances guide books from Ivar Revke's shop in Santiago de Compostela. (Ivar is the proprietor of the wonderful, informative Camino Forum, which is linked in the sidebar.) 

We ordered two different books because, as with finding a new recipe, it's always good to read more than one and compare them. 

Perhaps in a few days Blogger will be working better and allow photo upload. I certainly hope so!

Remembering Sobrado dos Monxes

Hello, everyone.

In my post last year, when we got to Sobrado, there was only the one photo. It showed the carved dome in the old monastery church.

Nearing the town, the trail (peaceful road, actually) passes a lake full of waterlilies.

The old monastery, now occupied again by monks, was partly despoiled by the interim owners, who sold some of the dressed stone for construction. In addition to the old church and some dormitory space, much of the old cloister remains.

At one time there were sculptures visible here. If you go there, there are old paintings that the monks  are restoring.

An angel? They have been cleaning the accumulated dirt from the image.

The town also has more modern things. We stayed in a private albergue. It's a couple of blocks away from the monastery.

We did go to Vespers, though, with the monks. It was peaceful to sit silently and join our prayers and meditations with the readings. If you haven't been to Vespers before, you know it's coming to the end of the service when the monks all recite "Padre nuestro,...." The silent hours descend for the monks then, and the visiting pilgrims all leave without chattering or side wandering.

The people's flower gardens along the sidewalks were in bloom.

This pinwheel blossom is apparently an actual variety.  I had never seen them before. Since then, I have occasionally seen it mentioned on various gardening pages on the web.

Gazanias? So pretty.

More Camino memories

Hello, everyone.

As we walked, we took pictures of interesting (to us) things.

Horreos are famous for being found in Galicia, but they are also found in Asturias. They were developed to store and dry grain in the humidity of a high-rainfall climate.

This slate-roofed horreo with the pointed stones on the top was along the "alternate"--read older--route before Mondonedo. It has the rectangular shape we saw on many of the Galician horreos.

This one is a square instead of a longer rectangle. The owners have hung their corn (maize for the Brits who might be reading) on the sides to dry.The roof appears to be made of tile.

These are some of the interesting things one can see if one is willing to walk through the villages instead of trying to find the remotest paths available.

In Santiago, third day

Hello, everyone.
After tending to the Compostela paperwork on Wednesday afternoon--there was a line but it moved right along--and tons of educational stuff yesterday, today we got down to the whole reason for the pilgrimage. We visited the tomb of the Apostle and went to Mass. Your blogger also got into the line for the traditional embrace of the Apostle's bust, and spent some precious moments in the Capilla del Sanctissimo, adoring and giving thanks. (Not even thought of in various guide books, but highly recommended.)
While in line to embrace the bust, a longer line than to reverence the Apostle's remains, your blogger happened to notice glass windows in the elaborate structure of the altar. One appears to show the top of the tomb chamber. Unfortunately the line was moving just a little too fast to use the tablet for a photo, so that picture is not in this post.
Instead, a picture of the cross above the Holy Door, which is shaped just like the Cross of Victory from Covadonga. The cross on the roof of the Cathedral above the tomb is also this same, distinctive shape.

The circle framing the cross is additional. The Alpha and Omega symbols hanging from the arms, however, are part of the original.

The Cathedral has Masses running at frequent times, in an assortment of common pilgrims' languages. We went to the English language Mass. It came just after the Italian and possibly the French. (With all those side chapels they can do that.) I saw a sign advising pilgrims of a German Mass in the evenings, too.
There are a number of confessionals along the side walls, too. They are all of the enclosed seat for the priest, open kneeler for the penitent variety. Often the priest has a sign posted giving the languages he is able to hear penitents' confessions in.
It is said that arriving in Santiago is not the end of the Camino, but the beginning of the rest of the Camino, which the pilgrim enters when departing for home. Certainly the pilgrim who looks at himself will find he has growth to continue.
Ultreia.

In Santiago, 2nd day

Hello, everyone.
Today, one of our planned rest days, we put walking shoes back on our feet and went discovering things.
We visited the church and museum of the Benedictinas, San Paio Antealtares, on the Rua Sacra. The church was using a tabernacle veil--a cloth in the seasonal color that covers the Tabernacle. There were a number of Benedictine saints depicted in paintings in their museum.
We went to the Cathedral Museum, something we had never done before. It is in parts, and the ticket gets you into various things. (Pilgrims who have their credencial get a discount.)
We went to the train station. Yes, it still has about a hundred and ten steps to get down to the actual station level.
Then we walked over to Sta. Maria de Saa, the parish church of the city. This is one of the parts included in the Cathedral Museum ticket. They close at 2 pm for siesta but we saw a number of interesting things there.

These buttresses were added to counteract the soggy soil in the area, which is near the river

The altar of the church. There is a remnant of medieval painting on the dome above the altar.

And for the capstone, we took the rooftop tour of the Cathedral roof. This was very interesting. Also quite athletic as there were many, many steps to ascend and descend.
Instead of eating formal dinner we ate tapas at Abaste (sp?) which is adjacent to the mercado of Santiago. We shared some really wonderful food there, a "ceviche" which was really a Spanish version of sea bass sashimi, and grilled octopus. These tapas filled us up and we called it a day.

In Santiago!

Hello, everyone.
Yesterday we crossed paths with a "gran colegio", a student group. Today we were intermittently in the midst of the about 100 Italian teenagers. They were going as a group, walking the last 100 km, with their bags transported and snacks provided. Before we all say, "must be the life," I think we should remember that this multiday walk covering about 62 miles is probably the longest walk the kids have ever had. All the same, one of the girls alternated between spinning her hiking pole like it should be a baton and trying to jump over it. Ah, youth!
We call groups like this The Childrens' Brigade. We're so used to being mostly alone and with the people walking with us going quietly as they each strive for the goal that it's hard to remember that the Camino is for everyone.
We got into Santiago today around noon.
Routes in the area of Lavacolla are not what we remember from 4 years ago. There is road construction in the area.
A little photo I want to share, the front facade of the Cathedral  here in Santiago. The big cleaning project is moving along and the difference is amazing.

Ultreia.

Sobrado dos Monxes

Hello, everyone.
We reached Sobrado dos Monxes in good time today, a walk of 25 km. We took a rest break a couple of times, at the places we found cafe-bars. As the internet here is being slow, there will be only one picture.
Point of information on the name of the town: the monastery here was founded in the tenth century as a pair of Benedictine monasteries. (One male and one female) About two centuries later, the Benedictine foundation apparently gone, the original donors' heirs offered the property to St. Bernard of Clairveaux for use as a Cistercian monastery. There were many ups and downs over the centuries and now there are about 20 Cistercian brothers living there. They welcome pilgrims in fulfillment of one of their long time customs.
The buildings were heavily damaged in the years after the Spanish kings confiscated all the male monasteries in Spain because not only were the brothers chased out, but the king's desire for funds led to sales of the properties seized. As a result the present church and cloister has needed much repair and almost of the previous furnishings remain.

The dome at the crossing of the nave.

Tomorrow we will walk to Arzua.
Ultreia.

We have had two beautiful walking days in a row

Hello, everyone.
We have indeed had good walking mornings, actually for the mornings. I am coming to think that spring in northern Spain has daytime heating rainstorms. So if you are out walking just after sunrise and it's great weather, you should get your kilometers done before around three in the afternoon. After then, you might be caught in the daily drench.
Yesterday we walked from Villapedre to Tapia de Casariego, a smallish resort town on the coast.
I will admit that the online comments about the scenery blinded me. The municipal albergue at Tapia de Casariego does indeed have great views of the ocean, the rock beach, and the sky. It also has at most one washtub to do laundry. The clothesline is under the sky. Remember what I said about the afternoon rain? I ran like a crazy to get the things inside when it started!
Today we took a short day and are staying in Ribadeo.

No pictures today because Blogger put my pictures into limbo.
Tomorrow we turn away from the coast and begin angling southwest toward Santiago.
Ultreia.

Memories of the Camino Portugues

Hello, everyone.

It's been busy around the Olde Homestead the last couple of days, with more busy to come tomorrow, so I thought I'd put up an art photo from the 2015 pilgrimage.

This is a depiction of the remains of St. James (Major) being transported to his eventual burial place in Spain. Two of the seated men are probably his two disciples who had accompanied him on the trip to Jerusalem. Presumably the third man is the captain of the stone-carrying ship. The two shells placed in the upper part of the picture, plus the red Cruz de Santiago on the mast of the ship, identify the subject.

It wouldn't be a pilgrimage without at least one steep climb, right?

Hello, everyone.

We left Ponte de Lima after having the (totally unexpected) experience of drinking coffee at 7 in the morning. This was the on this trip that a coffee shop or bar was open that early in the morning.  We promptly found ourselves walking on lovely forest area paths and passed a dam with pretty water flowing over the top.

After that we came to a Fishing Park, a place where people could borrow poles and catch fish (pay by the pound for the fish) in a pleasant location. There was a snack bar with a nice, clean bathroom. (Don't laugh! Someone, somewhere will be glad to know that, if they make it to the Fishing Park, there is food, drink, and a bathroom.)

We passed the famous Fonte de Tres Bicas (Fountain of Three Mouths) and shortly thereafter came to a road crossing. Our way along the trail continued on dirt--not only straight ahead but steeply up! We stood there looking at it and trying to get up nerve to go. While we, and some other pilgrims, were doing that a young man walking solo came up, said "huh," and trotted right up the hill! After seeing that, we had to quit waffling and go.

We saw sap-gatherers marks on the pine tree trunks.

After we got to the top, and rested a bit on the considerately placed bench, we got to go down. There were even more rocks on the downhill side.

Note the yellow arrow hidden in the electric pylon. This was a standard place to put them on the Portuguese way--apparently folks aren't so in love with having yellow spray paint on their walls and rocks as all that.

DH went out onto the top of the dam to get this picture.

It's amazing how much less steep this things look when you aren't walking them! This is the uphill side. 

The down hill side. 

We reached Valencia/Tui on this day. This is the fort on the Portuguese side of the border.

 We reached the Spanish-Portuguese border this day and crossed over. There is an albergue close by the cathedral in Tui and we happily stayed there. An afternoon snack of tortilla de patata, a tour of the interesting cathedral, and dinner ended the day.

Hot days are back again

Hello, everyone.

We have gotten to within 50 km of Santiago. We're in a lovely spot above the Parfumeria Moderna in Caldas de Reis. Caldas is an ancient spa town with natural hot springs.

The temps displayed on the pharmacy signs as we walked into town said 38 C. That makes it officially hot. It was almost as hot yesterday when we arrived in Pontevedra.

 Menu board from where we ate

This was the bottle of Tempranillo wine we had with our shrimp and octopus with melted Tetilla cheese.
Yes, I know it's customary to have white with seafood. But we like reds, and we really like tempranillo and Rioja crianza. So the food police can just deal with their anxieties.

Octopus

Hello, everyone.

I suppose y'all can tell that the Christmas seasonal rush has been keeping us busy. The group activities are done, but there are still many family things. Gift shopping. Cookie baking. This year, for my first time, cookie decorating. (I think I don't like almond extract.) Fruitcake baking. Wrapping. Checking the delivery progress of mail-order things that haven't come yet.

Today, as I was getting ready to roll out a ball of dough, my sweetie said, "What are we having for dinner?" Umm. So we pulled an octopus out of the freezer and put it into the sink to thaw. Then, because the food that goes with octopus is baguette bread, pulled the two frozen loaves out to thaw and rise. And when I sat down at the computer and riffled through the pictures in it, I came across this:

The old fortress of Carlos V--or is it San Carlos?--in Fisterra. The nice man who showed us around the Fishing Museum inside is on the right. Check out the gorgeous hydrangea bush!

 And especially this:

Lobster traps/octopus traps.

The man told us that these round boxes are lobster traps. They put the bait (chicken necks or something like that) into the trap and leave the little door open for the lobster to go into it. Apparently the lobster can't figure out how to get out again. Or he is trying to take the food with him and won't leave it. At any rate, it developed over time that the fishermen would pull up the trap and find, not a lobster, but an octopus. The octopus would come along and either go for the lobster bait himself, or even more likely, go for the lobster. Then he would look around and say, "hey, nice cave. I think I'll just live here." And he'd stay. He'd even stay while they pulled the trap up. All because he's greedy (for the food) and lazy (just moves in on this little "cave.")

I wonder, now, how many of our bad habits that we get are basically us acting like octopus? We do something because it's easy and seems to solve a little problem. Then we get comfortable in it, and don't even think about changing. Even if the little habit turns into a bad problem, often we don't open our minds to getting rid of the habit. And all the while that rope is getting tighter on the trap, and pulling it up and up...until our self-created bad habit make a big wreck of some thing that we really care about.

Frutas del bosque remembered

Hello, everyone.

The Camino lives and grows in your soul, and at the oddest times you find yourself missing one particular moment. That happened to my sweetie this weekend. He went to HEB and saw the ripe (imported) cherries and came home to say that I should pick them up. It's a great deal, he said. Well. Maybe, for midwinter, but they were still about $6/pound. (4-plus euro for the half kilo, ouch!) I didn't get them. But I thought about it--and here is where my thought led me:

In the last part of the Camino, in Galicia I think, we were walking along over green and often woody hills. We passed one particular bit with some houses, my sweetie walking ahead as he so often did, and I looked up and found I'd caught the eye of the sweetest little old lady. She was sitting on her chair in her drive, just off the trail, and arranging frutas del bosque (raspberries) in baskets for sale to the passing pilgrims. She smiled at me with the brightest twinkle in her eye...I caught up to my sweetie a few steps later and said, "I can't believe you passed that up." Well, he didn't know what I was even talking about, so he went back, and there she still was. He got a basket of berries and we munched on down the trail, quenching our thirst with the wonderful berries.

And that was what he was really after with the cherries. He wanted to be there again, on the trail, meeting this nice old lady and getting a basket of berries to eat.

Once I figured that out, I looked around for something that was a little closer to frutas del bosque. And there were fresh blackberries there, marked down to about a dollar for 6 ounces. I got two packages of those and handed them to my sweetie with "I got your frutas del bosque at the store."

Now I want to be back there, smiling at that sweet lady, and then tasting the lovely juicy berries. (and as with so much we saw toward the end, neither of us had a camera out!)

This and the next one were both on the same day. The path was slanted and rocky, so we walked on the road instead. That bright red speck is my sweetie, up ahead.

We saw so many different pilgrim statues. You can see, he has his staff, his water gourd, his Cross of Santiago on his coat, and his shell on his hat.

Top of the pilgrim monument at the overlook Monte de Gozo just before Santiago.

Thinking of O Cebreiro and weather

Hello, everyone.

I was thinking, this morning, about weather and the Camino. We were, after the 3rd day, often very fortunate in our weather. It rained, but it rained at night after those few days, almost exclusively. (Exception for the frightening thunderstorm en route to Los Arcos--nothing like being the tallest thing in the landscape and the lightning strikes less than 2 seconds before the thunder crashes.)  It was still rainy season in northern Spain, and the map tells me we were mostly parallelling the coast about 50 miles inland. We did have a couple rain periods during walking time, but the sun began to poke out more and more as we got closer to Logrono.

The sun still was afraid to show his face at noon. I don't know why, he would be out and pretty in the morning, but the day's high temperature for about a week was at 10:30 or so in the morning. By 11:30 the clouds had beaten him back. They grow strong clouds in Spain!

I was wondering today what the weather is like now at O Cebreiro, the restored Celtic village, church, and albergue at the second-highest part of the Camino Frances. And it was harder than I'd expected to find a webcam of it. This shows parts of O Cebreiro that I didn't see at all! (But there was a paved highway up to the top, and I did see a car or two that had driven up there, so it's not really a surprise.)

I have already posted what pictures we took there, during the trip recap post series in August and September.

O Cebreiro was where, having sunk to borrowing my sweetie's tee shirt for the day, I bought a new one at the little souvenir shop.

Almost the only tee in the shop that didn't declare itself to be a souvenir of the Camino--I just didn't feel right about wearing a Camino tee shirt while still on the trail!

Did I mention on the clothes post that I tossed out some of the entirely wrong things when packing to leave? (It was a panic thing, the pack was coming in over 20 pounds and I was tossing things right and left.) I should have kept the tee shirt! Then I found myself with only a couple of the lightweight woven fishing/camping type shirts, and the lightweight sweater that held no warmth at all--and wore out under the strain to top it all. (Tossed that, and the torn leggings from Day 1, before coming home!)

Ah, well, experience teaches as they say.

If I am able to go again, I will certainly take a long sleeved fleece top and a tee shirt. The fishing shirt (that orange-sherbet colored thing with long sleeves) did well, though, and the sleeves have tabs to hold them rolled up if you want to do that with them. Even if we should walk a different route the next time, I think this lesson of packing will hold up.

Friday fish dinner

Hello, everyone.

You may remember my gushing over the St. John's Day sardines in Fisterra.

We came home determined not to let the wonderful new foods fade from our memory. You will recall the post about making Pulpo.

Today we had sardines. Our grocery store, HEB, has been stocking little bags of frozen, fat sardines. They're not quite as fat and wonderful as the St. John's Day sardines--but the nice man at the fishing museum in Fisterra told us that the sardines start out very fat at St. John's Day and get, well, leaner and drier as the season progresses. I presume that all the frozen sardines we see were caught in the middle of the prime sardine season.

We eat the sardines with fresh baguette bread--that being basically equivalent to the barra breads we were buying in Spain.
The recipe for preparing the sardines, from my end, is really simple: thaw bag of sardines. Hand over to Sweetie. (He grills them over charcoal.) Serve with slices of baguette, sea salt, extra-virgin olive oil, and a nice white wine. No extras required. Fight off the pets who are crawling into your lap trying to get some!

The sardines (these were fresh, not frozen, but still...) we ate in Fisterra. With bread chunks and a nice albarino wine. 

And my sweetie was very proud of having caught me in a picture with the sign "pirata."

Just a few thoughts

Hello, everyone.

I will have an update on the shell beading project soon--have scanned the interwebs and discovered ways to do fringe. Also, expanding on the fringe for the Autumn Leaf amulet pouch on a web site (slips my memory just now) I have sketched a design for the fringe at the bottom of this square pendant with a scallop shell. Bonus points: I can use some of the blue enameled crosses that I have lying around in my (large) bead stash.

And one more thing--
When my sweetie and I first felt the pull of the Camino de Santiago, we didn't know what it would be like. What it would involve. And the depth of the roots that is would grow into our souls. Every day I think about the Camino--what it was like. What I wish I'd done a bit differently. What I'd do now if we were doing it again. (Not quite the same as the previous.) What routes I'd like to walk if we are so blessed as to go again.

Not only do I miss the good foods we discovered in Spain--ham cones! Pulpo a gallega with pan! Gambon al ajillo with pan! etc. etc.--but I have begun to make my own baguette bread so we can eat some of the wonderful foods we ate one the Camino, and during the days at the end when we were exploring and waiting for the date of our return reservation home. (No, I'm not recreating the airport food from the 1 day flight series that turned into a 3 day flight series.)

And periodically, like a growing crystal that is discovered by a gem hunter, I find a new lesson that the Camino has taught me.

It's not only the urge to have shells everywhere. The urge to create jewelry of shells and Crosses of Santiago. The every-morning feeling that it's time to walk, even before the alarm goes off.

The Camino de Santiago takes root in a pilgrim. I'm still a pilgrim. I don't think I'll ever stop being a pilgrim. And that itself is probably one of the lessons of the Camino.

Just after the stairs at the entry to the city of Santiago, studying the map of the city. I never felt sorry for the bicycle pilgrims until tha tlast day, when I witnessed them toting their bikes down the stairs alongside us. But at the bottom, they got to ride again. We walked the couple-three miles from those stairs to the center of the city on our feet.

This was another of the approximately 2200 pictures we took on our pilgrimage trip. :-) Enjoy.

It's not Madrid, but it does relate to Spain

Hello, everyone.

I know I told y'all that I really liked the octopus (pulpo a feira) that we ate in Galicia. I liked it so much that I trawled the internet and found a recipe to make it.

That was all kind of academic at the time, because I had no idea how to find octopus to cook. Then my grocery store (HEB) suddenly stocked thawed, cleaned octopus in the fish counter. Thank you, HEB!

Last night's dinner, in three photos:

Ready to dip into the boiling water

The instructions say to fill a large pot with water and get it boiling. I used a 20 quart stock pot. When it was boiling, I added the peeled whole onion and let it get acquainted with itself for a couple of minutes. Then I rounded up the long handled meat fork and used it to dip the octopus into the boiling water. Removed, stood tapping foot while water returned to boiling, Did the dip-and-remove-and-wait thing one more time. The next time the water came back to a boil, I put the octopus in and left it to cook. I set the timer for 45 minutes. (This octopus was previously frozen. And we know that freezing meat tenderizes it somewhat.)

Ready to check doneness

When the timer went off, I pulled the now-curled octopus out and put it onto the cutting board for the doneness test: cut a chunk out of the thick part of a tentacle and see if it's tender. It was. I cut the tentacles up into bite sized chunks. I also cut where the tentacles join into bite sized chunks. I didn't cut the head up. (The head I serve to the dogs and cats afterward. They love it, too.) Then I transferred all of the chunks to a bowl.

Yum!

I poured Extra Virgin Olive Oil onto the chunks, added a generous sprinkle of ground Chipotle pepper, and salted. I also sliced up one of the short-baguette loaves baked earlier in the day and we had Pulpo a Feira con Pan for dinner. With tinto to drink.

I confess, tinto sometimes is a little too muscular a wine for chicken and seafood, but it seems like the Spanish are keeping their good Albarinos and Verdejos at home instead of sending them overseas where I can get them. Drat. I love the Spanish wines.

(Oh, the bread was made from the recipe in my copy of Bo Friberg's Pastry Chef book...I've had it some years so I think there's a newer one out, but I'm fairly confident that basic baguette is still in the "Breads and Pastries" chapter. I used a pan of warm water on the bottom shelf of the oven for the steam and used the Pizza Tile and the spiffy new French-bread two-loaf pan to bake it.)

If I remember to take pictures, the next time we find frozen sardines at HEB, I'll take pictures of my sweetie cooking them for me on the fire. And likewise for the next time we make Gambon al Ajillo, shrimp with garlic and olive oil. Both of these are also served with baguette slices.

Did I mention that I divided the bread dough into 4 parts when I made it, baking two and freezing two at the formed loaf ready to rise stage? Now all I have to do to get wonderful baguette bread is to thaw out the loaves and let them rise and bake them. Bread dough freezes wonderfully well.

The Town with Three Names

Hello, everyone.

We got up in Arzua at our usual time and stopped by a bakery for a roll and coffee and some Spanish-language pop music. I felt like I was at home! It was the first time I had heard Spanish-language pop since leaving Texas.

Didn't you hear Spanish music in Spain? I hear you asking. The answer is, mostly, no. Everywhere we went, the bars and restaurants were either playing American pop (new or old) and just weren't playing music at all. Johnny Cash was nice, just because, but I really didn't expect to hear no "international" pop for most of the trip. Which just goes to show that expectations can be wrong.

We walked along the trail and crossed over (well under) the N-547 several times, before crossing over the small bridge of Rio Burgo and entering O Pedrouzo. Also called O Pino and Arca. One of these names is Galician, I don't know which, and I also don't know where they all came from. We stayed in a pension room that night, not wanting to have our rest interrupted by excited folks who had just joined the trail recently and hadn't worked off enough energy to be quiet.

You see my sweetie's hat posing for the picture!

The next morning, we were up before the sun and the sky was gorgeous! I snapped a photo on the way out of town.

Dawn on the Camino! I don't know why the camera thought it was June 20th. I have that day as June 21.

 About 8:30 we found an open restaurant in the middle of nowhere and had our breakfast bocadillo and coffee. Then went around the airport--didn't see any aircraft landing or leaving--and on to Monte de Gozo.

Monte de Gozo was at one time an overlook. The pilgrims would take a bath in Lavacolla, then keep on walking to Monte de Gozo. (Getting their clothes dirty all over again!) From Monte de Gozo they could view the Cathedral of Santiago. You can't do that anymore.

There is a lovely small chapel there, to get a sello at, and a small stand that sells drinks, and a gigantic modern-art thing to look at--but the view of the city is entirely blocked by the trees that have grown up on the downhill slope.

The top of the pilgrim monument. They did remember to put a shell on it.

I think the sculpture on the side is Pope St. John Paul II. I'm not sure what the thing over the shell-y path is. (And yes, I couldn't resist showing that we were there! Everybody was taking pictures of each other.)

We walked through miles of outer city before reaching the old town. We passed sculptures of various kinds and lots of traffic. Eventually we passed over the ring-road into the Cathedral area. We looked around for places to stay, even though it was only about 11:30 in the morning. After all, we had arrived! But every place we had an address for was full up. "Completo, completo." It was discouraging. As we began walking out to find one of the albergues whose signs we'd passed on the way in, I said a quick prayer: "Jesus, take us where we need to be."

Five minutes later, as we milled around like lost four-year-olds on the sidewalk, we heard a lady's voice. "Peregrinos! Peregrinos!" We turned around and saw a lady about my age. She offered to let us stay at her place--it turned out that she had an apartment that she rented out, and it was free for a couple of nights.
God watches over the pilgrims, that's all I can say.

We went to Mass on the Sunday of Corpus Christi. As it was a feastday, the confraternity of men who cares for it came out in their red robes and swung the Botafumeiro.

We paid our respects to the Saint--there is a kneeler in front of the casket with his bones, and a jeweled reliquary behind the main altar of the Cathedral--and there was also an Adoration chapel. So I was able to give thanks there as well. Over the course of our walk to Santiago, I had gone from facing the tabernacle with a laundry list of concerns--worse yet, a distracted mental babble--to on that day just sinking into the gratitude.

Palas dei Rei

Hello, everyone.

We had a noisy night in Portomarin, because of ambient noises of one kind and another. I don't know why I noticed them so much this time. One was an alarm that sounded like a rooster.

Leaving Portomarin meant returning to the kind of hills and woodlots and small villages and farms that we'd mostly been going thrugh. No more views of the pretty river, sadly--we were heading away from it altogether.

My sweetie's feet were really bothering him now, because we'd had so many rocky surfaces to walk on. We could feel the contours of the rocks through our boots, and if we hit a rock wrong, we got a definite advisory from our foot. I dont' know if this was because the insoles of the boots were dead, or the boots were wearing out, or we were just a lot more noticing by this point. At times now, I was actually walking ahead of my sweetie.

Morning clouds have not lifted off for the folks in the valley yet.

Nothing says fun like giant metal ants in the patio!

Unless it's a hog's head with sunglasses on.

I find in my journal that I forgot to write for a key couple of days--these ones! And in my sweetie's journal, everything stops at Palas de Rei. (He was pretty tired by the end of a walking day.)

As you can see, Galicia is as green as the early part around the Pyrenees. Trail marker in distance says to go left.

 As you can see in the above picture, we were walking along the small roads a lot. There are some big highways through this area, and when the trail comes to it you have a confusing set of arrows that lead you in a spiral that ends in an underpass, and then carries on. The way through the small villages is used also by the dairy farmers taking their cows to and from the barn, so even though the village roads are paved you can't always see much of the asphalt through the dried cow pats. I did say dairy farmers: the cheese style that Galicia is known for is a really rich, really good creamy soft cheese. Almost soft enough to spread!

I learned a new word for drumsticks: "the hams of the chicken"

In Spain, while there are grocery stores, there are also frozen goods stores in many towns. They sell fish, and this one had chicken, too. This congeleria was in Arzua. The sale on drumsticks works out to around $1.50 a pound, give or take for the exchange rate.

If I remember correctly, Arzua was the place where the albergue put us in a "private" room. That is, the room was small and there was only one bunk set in it. Which racked terribly. And I finally got to eat some Pulpo a feria: octopus chunks, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with pimenton. YUM!!! We also tried Galician style tortilla de patata, which is a little bit softer inside. I don't know how the cooks manage that trick. Maybe they just run the stove a little hotter under the skillet, so the egg cooks firmer on the outside faster and lets the inside be still soft and almost like a sauce around the potato chunks.

The poster for the concert. I think Mr. Johansen was going to put out a DVD of the music. Notice the Galician spelling of the date: Xunio.

Arzua was also the town in which we got to hear the concert by the cellist Dane Johansen. It was delightful. Mr. Johansen, an American musician, was traveling the trail with his cello, a crew, and a load of audio equipment. (Obvious, he wasn't toting all that on his back on the goat tracks! It would have been impossible.) He had a project going, to play in the old churches and recreate the beautiful sound environments the way people would have heard it--so no artificial boost to the volume. I still heard him very well. One of the songs was a Spanish folk song (Catalonian?) which brought to mind the walking through hills and looking out over the valleys with their "ponds" of clouds below me.

Not just another day on the trail

Hello, everyone.

When we left off with the Camino, we had stopped for the night at Paloma Y Lerma, a wonderful albergue some 6 km. short of Sarria.

Sarria is a decent-sized town. According to the Brierly map book, it has more residents than Astorga. Sarria is livelier, though. It's also a key point on the Camino route: it is just outside of the 100 kilometer distance circle from Santiago.

Cool shells in the railing along the river

It was around 8 in the morning. Not a lot of folks were in the old town area at that time.

Mosaic pavement at entrance to the Mercedarian (or Trinitarian?) monastery in Sarria

Why does that matter? Because a walking pilgrim must walk the last 100 km into Santiago to get a certificate from the Pilgrims' Office in Santiago. (Obviously, many people walk farther than that!)

People start walking the Camino Frances in different places. We started in St. Jean, in the French Pyrenees. Some people start from Roncesvalles, the monastery just on the Spanish side of the border along the trail. Others start in Leon, or Pamplona. And a great collection of folks with not very much time to invest in the pilgrimage start out in Sarria.

This produces a change in the atmosphere along the trail, as student groups on their school break and older ladies' caffeeklatsches join up, full of energy and talk, and enjoy their healthful walk in the countryside. Sometimes they leave their luggage on a bus and walk for an hour or so, to experience the path, then after their meal break they get back on the bus and go on. The pilgrim who has been walking for weeks finds himself tempted to resent this--he begins to think that these other folks aren't really pilgrims, because they're not quiet, they're not working as hard, and basically they aren't approaching it the same way he does.

We don't own the Camino. (I refuse to speculate about the inverse.)

We are where we are on the Camino because it's where we, personally, need to be. Presumably the noisy kids who are calling back and forth and blocking the path and spreading out all over the road (when the path is on the road) are where they personally need to be also. But I confess that I found it very tiring to be enveloped by the teenagers--we started calling them the Children's Brigade--who acted like teenagers on school break always do.

 After we passed through Sarria, we passed through many villages, and along many, many cow paths, and eventually reached the town of Portomarin. (27 km for the day) This town is on a hill, overlooking a wide river and a bridge. We stopped in Portomarin at our usual time--about 2:30 pm--and were glad to call it a day. We did see other folks, later in the day, who hadn't stopped until almost 6 in the afternoon, and they were having a lot of trouble finding a place to sleep. The influx of new pilgrims at the final part of the Camino means that there is a lot more competition for the available beds.

The church in Portomarin. If I remember correctly, it was moved uphill to keep it from being flooded when they built a dam on the river, and reassembled in its new site.

During our walk that day, we had gone up and down many hills, and through many woodlots, and over many rocky spots on the trails. The slopes didn't bother us nearly as much any more. And since we'd passed Sarria that day, we knew we were close to the end.

Crossing the bridge to Portomarin.