Santiago to Salamanca

Europe » Spain » Castile & León » Salamanca
July 13th 2006

Published: July 13th 2006

Edit Blog Post

keebs

Santiago de Compostela

The big cathedral looking building is the Catedral del Apóstal

Why do all these places I go to start with "S"? Anyways...midday on Monday, I found myself in Santiago de Compostela after a thirteen hour busride-pilgrimage from San Sebastián. Back in the middle ages, pilgrims from all over Europe went to Santiago to see the tomb of Santiago (St. James) supposedly brought to Galicia by his disciples. I followed the customs of bumping your head on Maestro Mateo, sticking your hand into Hercules´s head, and hugging the statue of Santiago in the Cathedral. The priest who made sure everyone was behaving kept trying to ask me how to say "embrace" in Japanese. I think that if he weren´t a man of God, I´d be a little pissed off about that. Funny how men of God can get away with this sort of thing. I got to sample some delicious Galician food (good seafood!) in Santiago. I had spicy pulpo (octopus) in olive oil and it was delicious!!! I also had little sauteed peppers (of Padron) and fried calamari! Yum!

Yesterday I came to Salamanca in Castilla y Leon to visit my friend Pai-Ly who I met in Limerick, Ireland. It´s the first time I´ve been in real Spain because everywhere

Complementary barsnacks

Alicia of Galicia and I ordered dos cañas and got all this food! We had dos mas and they brought another batch. It was ridiculous. Who gives away free grilled cheese and ham sandwiches???

else I´ve been people insist that they are Catalan, or Basque, or Galician. Last night we went out and saw a lot of Americans running around getting drunk. I think they are all studying here for the summer because Salamanca is a big university. I saw these Alabaman kids I met in Pamplona who were really hardcore American...very scary. I really am enjoying the architecture here. All of the façades have amazing work on them. On the Universidad Civil, there is a little frog sculpted into it that you´re supposed to search out and find to get good luck. I had to have clues so I don´t know if I get a little bit of good luck or not. On the façade of the new cathedral, there is a gremlin type thing holding an ice cream cone and an astronaut. Who would have known, they´d sculpt these kinds of things into building back in the 15th century.

Tomorrow I am headed to Coimbra in Portugal. I´m a little bit anxious about it because I don´t speak any Portuguese and going to new countries always has this effect on me. I´ll be in Portugal for the next week (meeting up