Today we played the tourist. This picture shows what we got when we asked for a coffee with milk and a zero beer. The coffee came with a piece of cake and the beer came with a salami sandwich and the whole lot came to €4.40! Adding extra complementary food has been a thing here. The other evening we arrived at a restaurant and before we’d ordered anything cheese and ham sandwich arrived.
This morning, we didn’t rush to get up; after having to leave our baggage for collection every day before 8am, that was a luxury!
Going into the Cathedral is free, so we did that first.
It is an enormous building – or rather, collection of buildings and re-buildings, as we found out later. We lit another candle for our friend Ben, admired the totally over-the-top decoration, then we all dutifully filed past the cask of St James in the crypt. We’ve come all this way, with thousands of others. But the question occurs to you: who’s in the box? Someone is in there. And a lot of people genuinely believe it is Jesus’s disciple, James.
James was beheaded in Jerusalem in the AD 40s. So things don’t quite add up. What’s he doing in Galicia? The story goes, he proselytised here (although nothing in the historical or religious record shores that up), went home, was executed, and was brought back from Jerusalem in a boat (of stone?!) by disciples, got carried in an oxen cart to a forest on a hill (with his disciples killing a dragon etc on the way) and was buried. So far, so unlikely. 900 or so years later, a hermit, guided by stars (hence Compostella, maybe), found the tomb, and the local top guy in the clergy ruled that it was St James. Which was handy at the time, as he needed a rallying point against the Moors. The King came – and pilgrims started coming.
The story doesn’t end there: by the 1490s, Sir Francis Drake, the pirate, (not him again) threatened the Galician coast, and St James was hidden by the clergy, as relics can be powerful in the wrong hands. His hiding place was forgotten for several hundred years; the pilgrims stopped coming. Then, during renovations he was rediscovered, reinstalled, and the pilgrims started coming again. And here we are today: inspired, supporting the wonderful Galician people and their economy, and motivated to walk hundreds of miles (which is really worth it, whoever’s in the box).
To get a bit more of the history, we booked our time slots: a visit to the cathedral museum and “Portico de Gloria”, and a tour of the cathedral rooftops.
The museum visit didn’t really work well, which is surprising given the tourism angle here. We were guided into a cordoned off area behind the main doors of the cathedral (which are always shut) and then left there. Our bemused group hung around for a while looking at the amazing sculptures on the famous historic doorway created by Master Mateo in the 12th century… and many then left. However, we noticed a small corridor, which led to a labyrinth of other corridors and rooms with lots of architectural items as well as jewelry and valuables displayed. There were some information boards, but it was quite dark and poorly lit. It was hard work to make sense of it all.
We spent the time between appointments in the huge park in the centre of Santiago, where we had one of Jane’s now famous supermarket picnics.
Our second visit was a guided tour but in Spanish – all the English tours were already fully booked for today. Jane got much more of the Spanish than I did, so we managed. Where we were taken was extraordinary. This photo was taken at the top of a long flight of stairs which were pretty medieval and uneven, looking down into the nave where had been that morning.
Then we went a bit higher and out on the roofs of the cathedral.
The guide explained the various towers, architectural structures, renovations and history. The cathedral has previously doubled as a defensive building, with soldiers living on the roofs. More recently, the guide explained, the bell ringer and his family lived up here. He had three children, rabbits, a goat and vegetable garden! You can see the line of the roof of his rooftop hovel in the stonework to the left of the round window.
We then went even higher so I was able to take this picture.
We’d walked over all of these roofs, as part of the tour, hearing about how the building developed over centuries of additions, renovations and changes: the various towers, the (unlikely) repositioning of the pilgrim clothes-washing pool on the roof, the clock (currently not working) and the surrounding buildings, over which we had a Birds’ Eye view. At least, Jane heard about it…. I just caught snippets!
There were some great views from higher up. To give an idea of the scale of things I’ve circled a cross viewed from the top…
…and from the square.
We’ve decided that being a tourist is much harder work and less enjoyable than walking!
Tomorrow we are up early to catch a 7:48 train to Ourense where we change (hopefully) for a train Astorga where we have friends.
