Final days Spain + celebrative stopover

Santiago de Compostela: a place that likely rings a bell even if you’re not much of a religious person or a adventurous traveler. There are various famous long routes that lead up to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, and they have been traveled by pelgrims for thousands of years. According to Christian tradition, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus, Saint James, was beheaded in Palestina in the year 44 AD before his body was put to sea on a stone boat by his disciples. The boat landed on the coast of Spain, just near of where Santiago now is. His remains were buried in a specially built chapel, later becoming the large cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Besides Rome and Jerusalem it then became the most popular pelgrimage destinations and remained to be so to this day.

With expectations raised high, we are a little disappointed to pass the town’s welcome sign midst industrial buildings and streets characterised by concrete and lack of colour. After having parked our campervan at the local camping, we walk down towards the cathedral following the scallop shell shaped signs on the ground (the scallop shell is the symbol for the pelgrimage) and are a still little underwhelmed by this famous pelgrim route’s final kilometers. We wonder how the walking and cycling pelgrims experience this: after all the hardship of their travels they too might have expected a more sensational arrival at their final destination. However soon we reach the old quarter of town. Here we find the narrow winding streets we expected. There is no straight way to the cathedral and we even loose sight of the shell signs walking our way there. Then, suddenly, we find ourselves on this large square and look upon the cathedral as well as three other historical buildings being the parlement building, a college building and a hotel. The cathedral provides an impressive sight and is beautiful! We are lucky to visit just short of a year after renovations have completed and the cathedral’s façade can again be admired in its full glory since being hidden by scaffolds for long eight years.

The interior of the cathedral is just as impressive in size and decorations. One of the many highlights is the Botafumeiro, which is world’s largest incense burner. It measures 1,5 meter and weighs 54 kg! When being used on special occasions it is swung from side to side all the way up to the ceiling with speeds up to 68 km/hour, pulled by a group of red-robed men. Thanks to my dad we know to ask for when this event happens to take place as pelgrims can also request (pay) for it outside of the scheduled dates. You can imagine we are thrilled to hear the event will take place this very evening! After attending the mass (all in Spanish but accompanied by a nun singing pure like an angel) five men come out and start lightning and swinging the Botafumeiro. The size, the speed, the scent… it’s a magical experience that we won’t forget.

The next morning we move our campervan from the camping to a secured campervan parking nearby, as we have an important pitstop to make outside of our holiday route and need to make our way to the airport… that happy phone call I mentioned in the previous post was my sister Marleen and her fiancé Jeroen calling to introduce us to the newest member of our family: their daughter Vera Sofie Mulder is born on the last day of March! Since Spain isn’t that far away from The Netherlands and we’re keen to meet Vera in person we fly back and spend two days with Vera and family before returning back to Santiago and continuing our trip. It’s a break we are glad to take, and it’s very worthwhile being able to hold Vera as a newborn and support Marleen and Jeroen in little ways during this short time. Hip hip hooray! *happy dance*

As precious as the time with Vera and others was, we are happy to return to our green pod (and the sun + 20 degrees celcius) in Spain. Our last 1,5 day in Spain before driving into Portugal are spent at the coast of A Lanzada, still in the region of Galicia. We find ourselves a cute little camping hosted by a Dutch guy and his wife. As weather is pleasant and the view on the Atlantic Ocean is magnificent we chill the afternoon with a bite, a book, and the hope to spot some dolphins in the ocean below. Apparently they are regularly spotted from the camping side but it will turn out we’re in no luck to see them during our stay. Ah well, it’s pretty amazing without them in sight! The view gets even more amazing when the sun sets. We take it all in at the cliffs just outside of the camping.

On Wednesday we wake up to more cloudy weather, and we set out on a 18 KM hike from A Lanzada to O Grove. It’s a nice hike that starts up the cliffs next to the camping, continuing along the beaches and dunes of Praia Da Lanzada, and takes us steep up through a forest and over rocky paths around Ardia. The last bit is through a forest of giant trees and a delicious scent. At first we are a bit confused seeing a whole forest of trees that look like and smell like Eucalyptus - can it really be that this tree native to Australia is growing here? At lunch in O Grove we learn (thanks Google) we spotted it correctly: a Galician monk brought Eucalyptus seeds back from Australia in the 19th century. It adapted so well to the local climate of Galicia that it spread rapidly into large forests. Some of the older trees are 67 meter tall and 10.5 meter in circumference! I’m now carrying a leaf from the Eucalyptus in my bag where I keep my fabric face mask, making wearing it (still mandatory indoors in Spain) almost (almost!) a mini spa experience. Lunch itself is also a pleasure: as it’s already 15:00 pm most spots were closed for siesta (the rather long midday break common in Spain) we find a place that offers a three course lunch including a drink for only €14 pp! Our starters are tomato toast (me) and razor clams (Tim), our main is a shared pan of Arroz Caldoso: a typical local dish similar to paella but more soupy and totally delicious, and for dessert we share one Spanish tarta de queso (cheesecake) and caramel flan. Such a fulfilling lunch. A short walk through the town of O Grove and a local bus trip later, we are back at the camping to enjoy the evening relaxing and only having some salad for dinner as we are still full of the late lunch feast. Tomorrow we’ll be leaving Spain for Portugal, our main destination for this trip.Read more