Santiago de Compostela - Cathedral

From Pat:

We decided to give our feet a break and asked the desk clerk to call a taxi to take us to town for our tour. (Funny story about a hotel guest who approached the desk, complaining about "no power in his room" 😁)

The tour of museo y catedral was TODO en español, y muy interesante. A little souvenir shopping & stopped at a tapas bar on the plaza, before going to evening Mass.

More time spent in a church in a LONG time.

(back to you, Laurie)
The driver dropped us off, and it started raining -and of course, it had been sunny when we left the hotel. We checked in with our guide, whose name was Laura, and was told that the tour was in Spanish. Oh well... turns out I was able to pick up on quite a lot.

We started in the museum- no photos allowed - and as a result, no pictures from any of the tour because we were too busy concentrating on what she was saying. We then proceeded into the Cathedral itself.

A special feature of the cathedral part of the tour was being able to climb the steps to the statue of Santiago (St James) behind the main altar, and to embrace his silver cape. Definitely no photographs allowed there.
But it was all good, because we found out there was a Pilgrims' Mass at 7:30 pm. We figured "what the heck," and wandered around, settling into a tapas restaurant for sangria and croquettes for some pre-Mass refreshment.

Mass was packed. We stood behind the chairs on the side of the altar. Someone got up to leave and I was encouraged to sit down. There were three women in front of us, and one of them was videoing the service. A self-appointed Church Police lady (attired in shorts and hiking boots so we'd all know she was a pilgrim,) decided to set the young lady straight. The young lady switched places with a friend, and was writing in her journal - I presumed that she was inspired from her visit and was recording her thoughts. Legit, in my mind. Well, Church Lady wasn't having any of that, either. Pat and I compared notes afterwards, and decided that if we weren't in Church, we might apply special names to self-appointed Church Police lady.

Having spent some time in the presence of the Lord, we thought we could handle a walk back to the hotel. On the way we found a shop specializing in Chestnut products.

On the rest of the way Google Maps messed with us again, but Pat was very clever (she has to be) and switched it to "drive" instead of "walk" and it showed a direct route.

We found the hotel, and went in for dinner.

back to Pat ...

After Mass we spent a little more time in the cathedral. We started back through town and were invited into a little shop along the way that sold all products imaginable made from castañas (chestnuts). They even gave us a sample of a liqueur!

More walking - and more confused directions from Google Maps. It finally occurred to us to specify driving, instead of walking, directions, which helped a bit.

Returned to the hotel in time to enjoy a small dinner in their restaurant (jamón, queso y más vino) and promptly to bed!

A LOT of walking in Santiago ... from train station to our hotel (took a taxi to town for our tour) and back to the hotel after our visit to the cathedral. GoogleMaps was NOT our friend - nearly 13K steps for the day!Read more