Day 44 – 22 August 2023 – Santiago, Spain

A sleep in this morning with breakfast at 8am then off at 9am to explore the Cathedral of Santiago del Compostela. Our local guide Manuel, takes us to the main square in front of the Cathedral where all the pilgrims arrive & we see a fair number of pilgrims arriving & taking photos & celebrating their arrival with their walking companions. Lots of them have the pilgrim walking sticks plus the symbolic scallop shell.

Manuel explains the buildings around the square, when they were built, what they were used for & what they are used for now. One of the buildings was the original university in Santiago. One of the buildings was a convent, but now a part of it is a hotel. He also explains the different pilgrim paths & the various starting points in different countries. Around 30 years ago there were less than 100 people doing the pilgrimage per year, but then it started to grow slowly & has begun growing exponentially. This morning many hundreds of pilgrims have arrived already & there are thousands expected today.

The museum at the side of the church is very interesting, unfortunately we cannot take any photos, there are various religious relics on display plus old statues & religious paintings. The attached library has thousands of books on the surrounding shelves. The ceiling in the library is a work of art, carved from granite & painted to highlight the features, it is amazing. One piece of granite is not painted, just to show that all the ceiling is carved granite.

Outside in the courtyard the carved stonework is extraordinary, these stone artisans were extraordinary craftsmen. The archways & adornment of the bell towers is amazing. There are some very old cracked bells that were in the belltowers but have been replaced by identical new bells, made in the Netherlands. The biggest bell weighs many tons.

We are then taken inside the Cathedral, my goodness, what an amazing gilded alter & surrounds. There are not too many people inside at this early hour, however there is a long line-up of people wanting to walk past the covered casket of Saint James the Apostle. We marvel at the huge amount of work that has gone into creating all of this. Manuel explains that this is the third church on this site & the last one has been enlarged after it was built. We explore the different side chapels behind the altar with more stunning artwork on display. Everywhere is the symbolic scallop shell with the cross of Saint James embellished on it.

Then we walk outside, via the gift shop, yes, even the Cathedral has a huge gift shop for all the pilgrims & visitors, religion is a big business. There is a massive line of people out the door, down the steps, across the square & down the street now waiting to enter the Cathedral, so glad we were here early. We walk back to the main square in the heat, yes, it is very hot again, then board the bus for our next excursion to the coast. Manuel is a very good guide, so full of knowledge & simple to understand, plus a sense of humour.

The small farms we pass are now all growing grapes and corn, so many grape vines & all well kept. Lots of the old houses are made from stone with roofs of terracotta tiles. There are lots of large trees plus we notice lots of Australian eucalyptus trees growing large & tall. Monks visiting Australia brought back eucalyptus seeds & they adapted well to this climate.  They make wood pulp for paper manufacture from the eucalypt trees.

When we reach the coast we stop at Ria de Arousa (a large bay) at a large boat ramp next to where some large floating platforms are being built out of eucalyptus wood, because they are oily & last well in the water. These floating platforms are for growing mussels out in the bay & there are 2,500 mussel growing platforms anchored in the bay. The mussels are grown on ropes suspended in the water under the platforms, 25 meters deep & left for a number of years to grow out. Most of the mussel farms are family businesses.

Next we drive down to the coastal town of Cambados & stop at the Pazo de Fefinans (Fefinans Palace). It is time for lunch so we walk along the street to some nearby cafes then sit down for a seafood lunch. We sit in the shade but it is very hot, we are sweating in the shade. We order steamed mussels & crumbed prawns wrapped in vermicelli noodles with a beer to wash it down, instead of their local white wine, all delicious.

After lunch we walk back over to the old palace & Maria, the local guide, takes us through some of the furnished rooms of the old palace & explains the family who built the palace, when it was extended & the same family still owns it 400 years later. The rooms all have interesting furniture, paintings & decorations from the 1700s & 1800s. It is very hot inside the rooms. After the inside tour we go outside to have a brief look at the gardens & are then taken out to the distillery.

The family that still live in the old palace also distil & sell the local Grappa, with different flavourings to make liqueurs. We are shown the stills then offered some chairs under two giant & very old magnolia trees to sample the grappa. There are six different flavours as well as a couple of samples of straight grappa. Our choices were the coffee & the blueberry liqueur, the blueberry one still had all the fruit in the bottle.

The walk back to the bus was hot & the journey back to Santiago was very quiet, I think we all slept, a combination of the heat, walking & grappa. Back to Santiago & our air conditioned hotel, another great day.