Galicia!

Done with one final! Huzzah! So I'm taking a break and writing a blog for you all. Daniella and I went to Galicia (in the northwest corner of Spain) for Thursday to Saturday over el puente. Un puente is what the Spanish call it when there's a holiday, and then a normal day, and then another holiday and you take all three days off. December 6th was the signing of the constitution day and December 8th is immaculate conception day.

So we left by bus at 12:00am (they're playing Elvis music right now and it's making me happy) and arrived in Madrid at 3:30 to take our flight to Santiago de Compostela. We arrived in Santiago at 7:30ish and got to downtown at 8:30. And the sun was just coming up. This was the walk through the park to our hostel. Very pretty in the quiet morning light.

 And caught our first view of the cathedral.

This is on the way to the hostel as well.

Galician streets in the rain.

We couldn't check into our room until noon, but they let us leave our stuff and gave us a map. So we left to wander around the city. We quickly bumped into the cathedral. (Well not exactly) We quickly found the cathedral. Santiago is also much hillier than Valladolid and we were reminded of our hilly San Luis Obispo.

Attempt at artistic shot with the cathedral and this mossy wall. I really like moss, and I want to grow some in my garden, but I realize I would have to water it.

 So I realize that I need to explain about this cathedral. Legend has it that Saint James (Santiago in Spanish), the brother of Jesus came to Spain as a missionary, but died in Jerusalem, but later his body was sent in a boat to Spain, where it was buried and forgotten. (Somewhere in here, there is something about him coming down from heaven and helping the Spanish Christians fight the Moors so he became the patron saint of Spain but I'm not sure where it fits in) However, one night, some shepherd saw a bunch of stars falling in the field and it turned out that it was right where Saint James was buried! So they built a cathedral and the city is called Santiago de Compostela (Santiago of the field of stars--how pretty!) Then people started pilgrimages to the cathedral. It's still going on and called El Camino de Santiago. People walk or bike to the Cathedral starting at various points in Europe. Some do it for the adventure, some do it for the sport, some do it for the mystic spots that have grown up along the way. Some people do it for religious reasons; if you go in the year of Santiago (when his saint day falls on a Sunday), you get a paper signed from the pope that all your sins are forgiven. When we learned about that in culture class it made me really sad that people believe that they must do this to be forgiven and clean. That they must go to the pope for that, when the grace of God is found for free in Jesus. So that's the background of this cathedral. We didn't see many pilgrims (probably because of the weather and time of year). . .

It's very grand.

Daniella y yo.

We also went inside the cathedral and mass was going on, so we got to hear mass, which was cool, because I've never heard mass before. We also paid 3 euros to go to the cathedral museum, which was a bunch of fancy artifacts :/ But we also got access to this cool patio!

 And to go out on this balcony. Which. . .I'm not exactly sure we were supposed to? But it may have been included on the map of the tour? Cool views regardless.

Have I mentioned how I like moss?

 Daniella is pretty quiet, so I hadn't really got a chance to know her, and so it was nice to have a cup of coffee with her and chat about Christmas and our families and music before we went back to our hostel. Our plan was to go back to our hostel and take a nap and then go out for comida and have some of the famous seafood of Galicia. But having been up pretty much all night the night before, we slept right through comida. We decided to put off a big comida for the next day and go tapa hopping. We got some tea and toast to hold us over until then :)

Then we went tapa hopping and to try the famous white wine of the region, ribeira and albariño.

Daniella with a Galician empanada.

And me with mine. I pictured small empanadillas, but this was basically a pie haha.

Bigotes=mustache. This, in gallego, the language of the region, I'm pretty sure means "cafe bar, the mustache"

Pulpo or octopus, another specialty of the region.

This is the diner type place where we went for dessert. It was pirate ship themed.

But we had cheesecake and the almond cake that is typical of Santiago. Yum. But soooo full. 

The cathedral by night.

It was raining so neither of us felt like staying out super late. We slept in very late and decided to go to A Coruña, a nearby city because we had pretty much exhausted the options available in Santiago. 

We took the train and saw the pretty green countryside.

We went to a seafood restaurant and got an order of Galician cheese (probably like a quarter pound for both of us) and some pulpo croquetas. And some good bread. The best bread I've had in Spain. Crusty and chewy and yum. And some Galician beer.

Which was good because it tasted like bread.

And we walked out in the main square, which was all decorated for Christmas!

And got fro yo. haha.

 A Coruña is by the sea. But by the time we got to the sea, it was dark, so my ocean pictures didn't turn out well, but this is the best.

The next morning, we took an early flight to Madrid and missed our bus to Valladolid. Haha. Thankfully the exchange of tickets was easy though and we both agreed later that the time stuck in the airport was the most productive study session we've had in Spain so far. So it wasn't bad.

And my mamá welcomed me back with café con leche and cookies ^_^ She's very cariñosa! Anyway. . .that was Galicia!