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Published: July 17th 2015
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Sagrada Familia Main Portal
There is a detailed Bible story in every corner Spain, 2 weeks of discovery:
First Week: Barcelona and San Sebastian: Barcelona:
Gaudy with his incredible architecture, seen in the Sagrada Familia Cathedral, a church which has such a high attention to detail, that even with modern building techniques has taken over 125 years to build to the point where it is today and still has another 12 years to go.... and when we visited we saw scores of workers all over the towers with cranes and scaffolding working away, stone by stone detail by detail. And of course , the houses he built for local Barcelona citizens, like "La Pedrera" as well as several castles which we saw across Spain.
Dali and his craziness which we witnessed in his Museum designed and built by himself in Figures, anchored by the Mae West room a person he had an admiration for.
Las Ramblas, a grand avenue in the center Barcelona which leads you from high end shops, great Tapas bars and restaurants down to beautiful beaches on the Mediterranean. The
Barrio Gotic, a neighborhood that can trace it's origins back to the medieval ages with tiny rock paved streets or pathways, I should say. And last but not least:
Sagrada Familia
Designed to bring in natural light with amazing results wonderful everyday Spanish life seen from our apartment and our neighborhood; Our apartment was situated on a small "plaza" called San August Vell, with two Cafés- Tapas bars, and a small restaurant which we could see all of from our small balcony. It was fun to see the early risers go through getting their morning cup of espresso or café and then see at 8:30 night how the restaurant and tapas bars geared up for supper or "la Cena" which went on until 1:00 AM. When we first got to Spain Patricia and I thought, that we would never be able to eat that late regularly.... well at the end of two weeks in Spain we were certainly doing what the Spanish do and eating our cena at 9 or 10PM!
From Barcelona we rented a car and drove to
San Sebastian a small undiscovered city right at the neck of Spain on the Atlantic just a few miles from France. I call it an undiscovered gem because that is what it is, a small town that has an unbelievably great beach in the shape of a shell, protected by a large island just outside this bay-beach, yet there
S. F. Architect Work-room
Working on the details of the church are only two hotels on the beach, everything else are large early to mid 1900s apartments or even older populated by local families many for many generations. A few very good restaurants on the promenade and several miles of white sandy beach! We had a wonderful time! (see photos)
Second week: from St. Jean Pied de Port to Santiago the Compostela following the "Camino the Santiago": We drove across northern Spain from
St Jean Pied de Port, in France where the "Camino Frances" starts, through Santander, then
Leon where we stayed in a monastery built in the middle ages, then
Monforte de Lemons where we literally stayed in the castle at the top of the hill; a castle-monastery that was first built in the 1200s on the top of the only hill in town, you can see it for miles and of course we had a view of the entire town and countryside from our windows in "Our Castle" . Then we went through
Vilalba, El Ferrol and ended our trip on the seventh day in
Santiago de Compostela in yet another ancient (1499) and majestic building which began as a hospital-hostel for the "peregrinos" that arrived at
S.F. inside
Monumental! the doorsteps of the cathedral of Santiago De Compostela after their long two to three month walk through then "camino". Because it has served as a Hotel, for over 500 years since 1499, it is called the oldest Hotel in Europe.
Throughout this week we stopped at several places on the Camino and put on our hiking shoes to walk some stretches of this "way" to see what it was like and meet some of the people who were really doing the full 799 KM walk. This was very rewarding for us as we enjoyed beautiful trails and met several "walkers" or "Peregrinos", like the young lady who was resting in Leon after a long walk who was very thankful that we took her picture next to a statue of a Peregrino as for the last few weeks all she had been able to do was take selfies. And then there was the group of walkers who after trying with difficulty to ask us a question in Spanish, were very surprised when I asked them in English if they were from the states and then surprising all of us when they said yes, that they were from Fort Wayne
Indiana... which is where my Mother's family is from and they mentioned knowing some Federspiel from Fort Wayne. We also met a young man from Slovakia who had been walking on and off for a year with his dog and most recently for the last three months; he mentioned that he walked, because it helped work off much anger he had brought from Slovakia. On the last day walking into Santiago we met perhaps one of the youngest lone walkers in the entire camino: a very young 16 year old kid from Germany who was visibly overcome with emotion as we arrived at the Cathedral in Santiago, and he realized that after many weeks of walking alone he had finally done it! He pulled a Rosary out of his pocket and kissed it and asked to take a picture of him in front of the cathedral to send to his parents. Like this we met others, but what overall sticks in my mind from these short walks of ours and the people we met is the sense that all these people that walked had a calm but clear sense of purpose, whether it was religious or self challenge or self
Impromptu concert
In the plaza out of our apartment...a concert ... jut because.. discovery or any other reason. It was clear that they all had respect and appreciation for each other..again regardless of their personal reasons for walking. There was strong sense of camaraderie as they passed each other invariably saying the encouraging phrase: "Buen Camino"
Well, there is so much more to tell, but I am going to post this entry now, as it is late, and I want to send it before we get too far into Italy
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Matthew
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Amazing!
Great entry, Dad! That beach sounds like something out of story book. What I would give to see the Dali museum in person! Interesting about the mind set of people on the Camino de Santiago. Onward to Italy :-) Miss you guys