Summer 2021 - Spain and Portugal Part 2

 The Covid test required by Portugal worries me. You are supposed to need it unless you have your digital EU vaccination passport (pretty much the same throughout the EU). Well I am vaccinated, even if I don’t have the EU passport, so I figure it is time to take a stand, become an obnoxious American, and insist that my California record of vaccination be accepted. In short, I didn’t sleep so well and was up by 4:50 am. Showered and dressed I was on my way by 5:30 am, and got to the bust stop by 6:00 am ready for a long wait. Oh joy! At 6:20 the airport bus pulls in (I thought they started running at 7 am), and instead of the highway took this dinky narrow road that cut across the mountains and in 25 minutes made it to the airport. I had thus plenty of time to make a big stink about my Covid vaccination certificate.

I had pre-checked via cell phone, so I walked straight into the security line, got caught trying to smuggle my Swiss Army knife and a roll of electrical tape—which I just had to toss in the garbage—and without further ado got to my flight on way to Barcelona. No whisper of Covid, tests, or certificates.

A short layover in Barcelona reminded me of my favorite peeves about European airports. First, the departure boards do not list the flights by destination but by departure time, so I rushed to the first Lisbon flight I saw, only to find out it was with a different airline. My second peeve is that they publish the departure gate only 15 minutes ahead of the boarding time. In a small airport is no big deal, but in a huge airport like Barcelona you could be waiting at the A concourse and suddenly learn that you flight is departing from gate C23! No wonder there is a high incidence of heart attacks in European airports!

I was the first one to board the Lisbon flight (I have never been the first to board before), which got me to reflect on my third peeve: As always I got an aisle seat, so I was ready to get up and let my fellow passengers to get in. But time and again the people go past me and then say to my back “May I please get in?” So I have to stand up, push against the crush of passengers to create a small space for me to squeeze in while my fellow passenger takes the middle seat. Then the window passenger comes in and does it in exactly the same way! Arghh?

Landed in Lisbon without any trouble (again not a whisper about Covid, although I must tip my hat off to Europeans, who have taken the mask mandate to heart), rented a Fiat Panda, and despite the efforts of Google Maps to send me astray I successfully traveled to the port of Setúbal (SE of Lisbon and about an hour away from the airport) to meet my friends Maria Eugenia and Juan Ley Pozo, who I had not seen in nearly 10 years. I would normally meet them in Madrid, where they live, but they were doing a 3-day vacation here, together with Maria Eugenia’s sister and teenager niece, and I came to join the vacation party.

Got to Setúbal at about 3 pm, and they had a tasty bowl of rice and mariscos waiting for me. Then we all 5 piled into the Fiat Panda and went shopping. I had to buy a bottle of vinho verde, a tinto from the region, and a ruby porto to taste the local wines, but it may be a lot because everyone else is a water drinker. In the afternoon we went to visit the Fort of San Felipe, took a drive through the coastal boulevard, and walked along the peer. Reminds me of Veracruz.  One thing I have to say about Juan is that he is a dedicated tourist, eager to make the most of every tourist moment at his disposal.

For merienda we went to a seafood restaurant that was packed, and ate a delicious dish of almejas a la casa (clams cooked with onions and garlic, and garnished with cilantro, with much of the enjoyment coming from sopping the broth with pieces of bread) and a superb plate of grilled sardinhas with olive oil and coarse sea salt. Delicious!

We have rented an apartment in Setúbal for the next three nights and it was here that I rested my head to recover from a very full day.

The family woke around 8 am, had a typically sparse breakfast (a croissant, a tostada with marmalade, and a glass of milk; I am the only coffee drinker) and by 9 am we were ready to go. We took the ferry across the bay to a mouth barrier island (basically a sand spit) that is popular for its pretty Atlantic beaches and some rather exclusive condos. We waded and walked along the beach, but honestly if you are not committed to playing in the waves it grows old real fast. I did reflect that a tattoo might be sexy if artfully displayed by some sexy outfit, but when you see middle-aged women sporting a hodge-podge of tattoos all over their bodies it is not a pretty sight. I think that new tattoos should be added only after careful consideration of the existing ones.

We had lunch at the Museo del Arroz, which is an hacienda devoted to the growth of rice. It must be a tiny production, but they sell it well to the many tourists in the form of: arroz con mariscos, arroz con pato, and any other number of dishes based on rice. The arroz con pato was excellent! Lunch in Portugal and Spain is the main meal of the day.

Back in the mainland we enjoyed the rather warm afternoon visiting churches and walking down quaint, narrow, crooked streets. The Portuguese of the XVI-XVIII were very adept to the decoration of their public buildings with azulejo tiles, in which tile by tile a very complex scene would be depicted in blue-line against a white background. Very pretty, but I felt they had the tendency to depict Mother Mary as a rather stout woman. Perhaps this was the standard of beauty in the XVII century?

Juan is a regular paparazzi so while he continued down the street, taking pictures left and right, I silently glided into the tiny Museum of the Baroque (one room really) and an ingenious extra display of marine navigation instruments.

We got back home around 7 pm, with plenty of time to sit around the table and just chat. Maria Eugenia’s sister Beatriz and 20-year old niece Itziar are the other members of the jolly group. In a very Spanish/Latin way the 20-yeard old woman is always referred to as “la niňa”, and obvious indication that we all others are becoming old, old.

The following day we arose to the news that Juan had planned a full day of hard core tourist activities: First we visited the Mercado de Livramento, in downtown, which besides delicious displays of fruits and vegetables, has a full section devoted to fish and shellfish of every type found in the Atlantic, including skinny fish, long fish, fat fish, colorful fish, clams, octopus, a special type of eel that they call pez espada because it looks like the silvery blade of a medieval sword, squid or choco, …

Then we drove out of town to the estuary of the Sado River, to visit the Molino de Maré, a tide-operated mill that has been beautifully reconstructed by a non-profit. Just like I described for Neda in La Coruňa, they capture the high-tide behind a dam built across the mouth of a small muddy bay, and then let the water out during the ebb through four or five small openings, where it spins as many mill stones. The is tidal flats all around are big mires of mud, so the people there had to live in palaphite towns (or cidade palafita de marisqueros), where all of the tiny hovels were built atop poles, and where the different habitational units were connected by rickety walk-throughs where the kids would play (I wonder how many babies fell head down in the muck?).

An extra drive brought us up the sharp hill of Palmela, to visit its well kept and very impressive fort. I took the time to sip on a glass of chilled muscatel, a local product. By the way, I have also tasted vinho verde, a ruby port, and tonight will enjoy a regional red made of Syrah, Aragonés, Castelão and Alicante Bouschet grapes. With that I will complete my enologic tour of Portugal!

We headed southwest, toward remote Cape Espichel, but before reaching it decided to have lunch in Sesimbra, which Juan had described to us out of a tourist guide as a “pueblito de Pescadores”. Ha! It was a vibrant tourist trap, with giant hotels and thousands of sun seekers. We were looking for a small restaurant mentioned in in Trip Advisor, the Cantinho de Regina, as the best value for lunch. And it was! Regina is the owner, cook, and general factotum, and instead of offering the standard fare offers has her own menu of gourmet creations. We tried the Bacalauh o Cantinho and the spaghetti with clams and found them excellent and very reasonably priced.

Getting to cabo Espichel was a bit of a drive, and in the way there we passed a couple of pretty chapels, a dinosaur display, a couple of tasty-looking restaurants, and a lot of sparse forest. One we got to the cape we had spectacular views of the lighthouse, and precipitous cliffs that angled down to the ocean. The rocks exposed were a tilted sequence of tidal silts, limestones, and sandstones, and they reminded me of a photo I had seen a long time ago of the K-T sequence in Spain. So I took my professorial stance and explained what I was seeing to the others. The significance of the K-T boundary fell flat among my audience, but Juan was really intrigued by the 3-D geometry of the cliff, so I went ahead and explained about original horizontality, tectonic uplift and tilting, and coastal erosion. To help with the explanation I pointed to a particular dip-slope outcrop (a huge outcrop extending the full vertical extent of the cliff) and explained that the tilted surface we were seeing had been, in the geologic past, the surface of the tidal marsh that had occupied this part of Portugal at the time. We were a good 200 m across the cove, but I noticed a peculiar pattern of “tracks” on the dip slope, and on a lark I pointed them out to the others as possible dinosaur tracks formed maybe 80 million years ago. They were duly impressed.

The other attraction here in Cape Espichel is a small church, Santuario de Nossa Senhora do Cabo, notorious because this tiny church has a huge annex of two wings that were used until not so long ago to receive hundreds upon hundreds of pilgrims. We were in presence of one of the holiest places in Portugal, maybe in par with Fatima or Lourdes! So we read the display with care and learned that, according to the testimony of two separate witnesses, the Virgin Mary came out of the sea, riding a white mule, and that the mule had trudged up the slope leaving its footprints along the muddy slope. Imagine my surprise when I read that the tracks had been the object of veneration for well over four centuries, until they were finally examined by scientists who concluded they were dinosaur tracks! Man, am I good or what?

On the way back Juan wanted to visit the hermitage of the Convento de Arrábida, which is perched on the coastal slope of the Parque Natural de Arrábida, but it was closed. Pity, because it looked beautiful from the road. The return to Setúbal was spectacular given that the road climbs to the top of the limestone cliffs of the Sierra de Azeitao before dropping back down into the port.

The following morning we packed and tidied down the apartment, played a game of Tetris with people and luggage to make sure everything fit in my little car, and headed back to Lisbon. On the way we stopped to take a few pictures of the Lisboa Cristo Rei, who looks a lot like his counterpart the Cristo del Corcobado on the hills overlooking Rio de Janeiro.

The Ley family was staying at the Hotel Canada, in downtown Lisbon, so I dropped them down before heading down to Loures, a small toen north of Lisbon but presumably close to the airport, where I found that the “hotel” I had booked was a scam. The address given was that of a supermarket. Fuming I drove to the airport, where I dropped off the rental car, and used Booking.com to secure a bunk in a local hostel. I walked 20 minutes there (it was hot!) and found out that I needed a numerical code from the owner, who lives in Porto, to get in. I called her using my European cell phone, and she wanted me to send her copy of my passport and vaccination certificate to give me the code. The problem is that my WhatsApp only works when I am connected to wi-fi, and the caretaker didn’t have the password for the wi-fi. Arghh! Grumbling I had to make my way back to the airport to use their wi-fi but on the way there spotted a restaurant where I managed to get an excellent lunch and use their wi-fi. At the end all was well, but I have to say that all this double checking  and double authentication procedures are a royal pain for the international traveler.

I went back to Lisbon to say goodbye to Maria Eugenia, Beatriz, and Itziar in downtown (Juan had promptly taken the tourist opportunity to visit the Museum of the Impressionists). We had an ice cream together, and I visited the “Oldest Bookstore in the World”, established sometime in the 1700’s, to buy a birthday present for my young friend Lucas, in Paris. I am sure there were bookstores before the 1700’s, but they are no longer operating so the lonely one still standing gets to claim the honor. Later I went back to the Hotel Canada to have a last drink with my dear Juan, to exchange the promise that we will see each other again sometime or another. We are all approaching retirement at about the same time, so who knows what the future has in store for us.

After a hot sleep at my barebones hostel I walked back to the airport for my early flight to Paris-Orly, where after a few false starts I finally found Géraldine and her son Lucas waiting for me. I was very happy to see them 😊 Both Faby and I met Géraldine in Germany, 34 years ago, and even if we don’t see each other very often I am always delighted to spend time with her and her family. It was a bit of a drive, but eventually we got to their beautiful house in Treil-sur-Seine, which as the name implies is one of the many ancient towns that border the Seine River upstream of Paris.

Dad Nicolas and older brother Theo were there waiting for us, and after the traditional round of hugs and double kisses we sat down to a delicious lunch in the veranda. Nicolas grilled and made sure to include a few of the local sausages (marguez (?) that are as famous as the Graf Voelsinger sausages of Frankfurt). Géraldine and Nicolas have a very large ancient house, on what used to be carriage house of the retirement home of the nanny of the king—grandiose as any other Royal gift would be expected to be—with a long wooded backyard that extends almost to the promenade along the Seine.

In the afternoon we made the promenade along the Seine! What a gorgeous place to live! Géraldine surprised me with her deep knowledge of the medicinal plants that grow along the shore, while Nicolas proved to be a bit of an amateur historian who had many stories to tell about the distinguished authors and philosophers who lived in Treil-sur-Seine.

Theo is now 18, and he is getting ready to go to college, a few hours drive to the east, to study computer science. He can’t wait to get out of the house. Like his Dad he is “Mediterranean” in aspect, with dark hair, brown eyes, and olive skin. He is a very handsome, tall, young man, so I prognosticate that he will break many hearts in his new college town. Lucas, who just turned 15 years old (and got from me Asterix Gladiateur, in French, as a present) is very different. He is blond and blue-eyed like Mom, and loves helping around the house. I suspect that moving out to college is very far from his mind right now.

On Sunday I didn’t have any plans, so even though they had just come back from holiday the previous Friday, Géraldine and Lucas offered to take me to Paris for a walk around. Paris in a day! Well, not quite, I was not going to go for a full tour, but thought it would be nice to visit Montmartre, walk along the Seine looking at what the Bouquinists had to offer (I don’t know why since I cannot carry an extra book), and walk around the Ile de la Cité to take a look at the renovation work of Notre Dame. Poor Géraldine. With her very chic shoes (she always dresses and looks very chic) the walk was a bit more than she had bargained for. For me and Lucas it was a great day.

Monday morning Géraldine and I once again took the train back to Paris, she to work and me to Gare St. Lazare. I was heading for Frankfurt using the TGV (Train de Grande Vitesse), which at 250 km/hr delivered me to Hanau (via Karlsruhe and Frankfurt) in less than 4 hours. Toll!

Summer 2021 - Spain and Portugal Part 1

The trip to Spain and Portugal started with a very odd detour to Seattle, so I could use the air ticket I had booked at the beginning of the summer. I was entering the European Union in Portugal, and the silly Portuguese required me to have a negative Covid test that was no more than 48 hours old. So I did it at the Seattle airport for the outrageous cost of $250!

From Seattle I took United to Newark (full flight), and then TAP to Lisbon in a huge AirBus where I had the four middle seats all for my own. Yipee!

As I recall nobody asked me to see the results of my superexpensive test in Lisbon, and when I landed in Madrid all they asked was the QR code of my own self-registration as being vaccinated against Covid. I imagine than in a few more months they will have the digital vaccination certificate worked down to an art, but for the time being it is a pain.

At the airport I rented a car and went down to Guadalajara, about an hour travel time, where I had booked a hotel. The manager there indicated to me the good walking streets and in no time whatsoever I found a cellphone store, where I went in to see if I could have my iPhone 5 unlocked. The young Asian man looked at it with pity, as if I had handed him a stone artifact, and bluntly told me that it would be worthless to unlock it and that I would be better off buying a new one. He offered me a used iPhone 6 for 100 euros, and a few minutes later I walked out with a new phone that two blocks down the promenade I loaded with a Vodaphone sim card. Ha, ha! I now have a European phone 😊

By then it was getting late, and the restaurants were starting to open, so I chose a Grill Restaurant where there were no menus (you are supposed to scan the menu). I didn’t really know how to do that, so I looked at the chalkboard and saw “Cabrito al Horno” (baby goat). So I ordered that and the young man went in to ask and came back to say that they had a back leg if that would suit me. Sure, I am sure I can get enough out of a back leg to make a good meal. They must have started it in the oven from a cold slab of meat because it took forever for them to get back to me. In the meantime, I noticed that a lot of people around me were sharing a dish between two to four people. How neighborly of them. Then came my cabrito. It must have been a giant cabrito, because the piece I got was huge! It overflowed the plate and would have been for at least four people. So I ate, and I ate, and I ate, not willing to waste an excellent dish. I finally asked for the bill, which was alarmingly steep, and rolled up the hill to my hotel, in as close to a food coma as I remember ever being.

The following day I used my brand new phone to navigate my way to Zorita de los Canes, the little old town by the side of the Rio Tajo where my maternal great-greatgrandfather came from. I had been there ten years before, and came to say hello to my only living great aunt, Tia Petra, and to my cousins Laura, Charo, and Miguel. Tia Petra looked remarkably well for being now 90, was as sprite and loving as I remember her, but is definitely living in a much more limited world. She entertains herself coloring, and the fridge door and any other free surfaces are covered with pages from her coloring books. My cousins Laura and Charo are happy Spanish women and share the care of their mom with good humor. We had an excellent lunch of Spanish tapas, rabo de toro, and cocido, and afterward we three cousins went down to the town pub by the river for a cold expresso and a coke. It is very hot!

I hung around Zorita for a couple of days. The first day I went to visit the towns of Almonacid de Zorita and the Albalate de Zorita, where I had a delicious breakfast of café con leche and a bocadillo de morcilla (delicious Blutwurst). Later I walked along the Rio Tajo, visited the archaeologic site of Recópolis, where cousin Angelica, the wife of cousin Miguel is in charge. Recópolis was established in the VII century by Visigoth King Leovigildo (whose reigning seat was in Toledo). By now my head is swimming on who was where, but as I understood it the land was occupied by the Iberians, who got conquered by the Romans in the I century, who brought in their allies from France, the Visigoths, to manage the Iberians. Pretty soon all Spain is being ruled by the Visigoths. In the VII century, shortly after Recópolis was established, the Arabs invaded Spain, formed the kingdom of el-Andalus, took over Recópolis in the X century and built a castle on the adjacent ridge (el Castillo de Recópolis), and remained the lords of southern Spain until the XII century, when the Catholic Kings, Isabella and Fernando, finally expelled them from Spain. El Castillo de Recópolis was then transferred to the hands of the Caballeros de Calatrava, who were an order of fighting monks that acquired much power over the Catholic world in the time of the crusades. Angelica guided me through the castle, which has its foundations on a limestone reef; the underlying lagoonal calcareous sandstone served as building stone (sillar) for both Recópolis and el Castillo itself.

After the hot visit to el Castillo Angelica and I went down to the river for a cold beer, and were pretty soon joined by Miguel, his daughter Martha and her family. I was introduced to the drink called Tinto de Verano, made with red wine, lemonade, and a spritz of vermouth, all within an glass filled with ice. Heaven!

Afterward I went to have lunch with my Tia Petra, followed by an escapade w made in the car to Lago de Bolarque. My intention was simply to take my Tia out of the house, and the way there was very pretty and enjoyable. Once at the lake, which is ensconced between deep barrancos, I took a wrong turn and we got lost in the mountains. I think my Tia felt the joy of adventure as we climbed and descended deep canyon slopes, and when we were at the crest of the mountains she got some glorious views over the lake to the left and the valley of the Rio Tajo to our right. Finally, in a God-forsaken dirt road we came across a Guardia Civil patrol, who very kindly guided us to the exit of the maze we were in. Imagine the surprise my cousins might have had if the following morning they were to read in the local newspaper that their mother had been rescued by the police!

That late afternoon, solo, I went to the town of Pastrana, which is one of the most beautiful towns I have seen in Spain. A real treasure.

The following day I left early for the town of Alcalá de Henares, famous for having been the Roman city of Complutum, and for being the seat of one of the oldest universities in Spain, the Universidad Complutense (during the Guerra Civil, in the 1930’s, the administration of the university disbanded it, and Madrid took some of the faculty to form the Universidad Complutense de Madrid). During the 1970’s a group of citizens created a non-profit to revive their university, as “dueňos conjuntos”, but Madrid refused to return the name, so the current university is simply named the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares). They still hold that it is them who have the oldest university.

Another important claim to fame for Alcalá is to have been the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, and to be the cradle of the Golden Age of Spanish Literature, where Cervantes was joined by other grandees such as Lope de Vega and Quevedo. The city crackles with the spirit of academia and the fine arts.

After a lunch of paella and calamari, generously irrigated with a glass of Tinto de Verano, I was ready to change gears and immerse myself into the history of Complutum, by paying a visit to the little-known archaeologic site where the public market and public baths used to be, and the Boy’s College now named the “House of Hippolytus” after the artist who laid down the mosaic decorations and who, with a clear lack of modesty, signed his work in big bold letters. The mosaics were beautiful indeed.

The following morning, at 4 am, I left Alcalá to catch the 7 am Air Europa flight to La Coruňa, in the northwesternmost part of Spain. The airport is high in the surrounding mountains, so I had to walk down the hill to take the bus that would bring me down into town. The bus left me at the long-distance bus station, where I was able to stick my heavy backpack in a locker and thus turn tourist. La Coruňa is really two harbors separated by a narrow neck of land. The one to the east is the port (where I bought a pocket knife and a flashlight), and the one to the west is where the beaches are. In the grand scheme of things, La Coruňa is at the west end of a very large bay, and for the next few days I was going to walk along the east side of the bay, from Ferrol to almost Santiago de Compostela. The Spanish and the French fought many sea battles, and the bay of La Coruňa saw a lot of action. I walked along the waterfront for several kilometers from the port to the north, until I got to the Torre de Hercules, first built by the Romans in the I century, and was destroyed and rebuilt many times as both a lighthouse and a watchtower.

 La Coruňa was established by Roman Emperor Claudius in the I century, and is now within the autonomous region of Galicia, where they speak Gallego (which to my untrained ears sounds a lot like Portuguese). It is a lovely town and I had great fun walking through it, but at some point I had to get back to the bus station to pick up my backpack, which I did by a felicitous combination of bus transfers.

Loaded like a burrito I took yet another bus to the university campus of Zapaterias, where my guesthouse was located. I met a young couple and after explaining where I was going she quickly directed her boyfriend to walk me to my destination. If he was disappointed by cutting short his time with his girlfriend he didn’t show it, and we had a nice chat as I huffed up the hill to Rialta Residence, a student dorm that was going to be my home for a couple of days. When I got there and complained that I had to walk up the steep hill, the young woman at the desk looked at me with some astonishment and with a dead-pan expression explained that we were in Galicia, and that here the only way to go was uphill.

Rialta has its own bus that goes down to town every morning, noon, and afternoon, so that afternoon I went back to town for a couple of hours, and the following morning went down for the day, keen on making the most out of my tourist day. I cut across the narrow neck of land where downtown is located and followed the waterfront of west bay. Very pretty.

I stopped at the Museum of Science and Technology, which had little more than a sample of the technologies that had been used in Spain from 1900 to 1910, from 1910 to 1920, …, and from 1990 to 2000. An interesting walk down memory lane.

I also visited the house where Pablo Picasso had lived between the ages of 13 to 15, which had a display to his very prolific sketchbooks of the time. At 13 he was already a fantastic artist! After a couple of years his family moved to Barcelona, and he never came back to La Coruňa.

Where is everybody? It was noon and the city was decked for the celebrations of Maria Pita (a councilwoman who saved the citizens from the threat of a massacre of one type or other) but there is no one to be seen. Being Sunday I thought all cafes would be packed, but nothing was open. At last I found a little “chain” restaurant by the beach and managed to get lunch. It was OK. Only later did I find that everyone was jammed packed along two narrow streets where all sorts of tapas bars had good end expensive food to offer.

Monday. Up at 5 am and ready to go. Breakfast at 8 am and shuttle bus to the bus station to take the 9:30 am bus to Ferrol, where I arrived an hour later. I was here to start walking the Camino Inglés, one of the many routes of the Camino de Santiago, which conveyed pilgrims from England to the famous sanctuary. I had been duped into this adventure by my mal amigo Raúl, who had committed to it months before the pandemic, confirmed two months before, and only last week had bailed out on me because “he had to work”. What a lame excuse. Well, maybe “lame” is not the word I want to use, because as I was trudging along in El Camino, my mal amigo Raúl tripped and broke his ankle something awful. Pobrecito.

Arriving in Ferrol I made my first two amigas del Camino, Susana and Nea, who fortunately knew where the official starting El Camino Visitor Center was down by the port. We got there, got our passports, and to my great delight I found out that there was a backpack shuttle service, that for 5 euros per stage would take my heavy backpack from one station to the other so I could just enjoy walking with my staff and little bottle of water. I was very worried that I would not be able to walk 100 km with my big backpack! I stayed at the Hotel Aurora in Ferrol, walked around the port and had a delicious dinner of salpicon de marisco, and braced myself for the long walk I was starting the following day.

I woke up at 4 am for what seemed like an easy walk of 15 km to Neda, simply following the shore of the bay. At the very far end of the bay there was an interesting tide dam, where in the 1800’s water would be let in at high tide to replenish the reservoir, and then was allowed to flow out through narrow tunnels to turn 8 mill wheels to turn wheat into flour. An early application of tidal power, which I also saw in Portugal at a later time. Fortunately when I got to Neda the small hotel where my backpack was dropped off had an empty room. The available beds in this route are very limited because of the pandemic. And so are the eateries for that matter. I was lucky to found a supermarket where I bought the makings of a bocadillo de jamón serrano for lunch, and an empanada de bacalao and a bottle of wine for dinner.

The following day I resumed my circumnavigation of the greater Bay of Coruňa, which apparently is what I will be doing for the next few days. Something like walking from Marin County to Vallejo to Oakland to Hayward to Milpitas to San José. I finally crossed the medieval bridge over the Eume River to get to Pontedeume (Get it? Puente del Eume). Pretty town that reminded me a lot of Sausalito or Ginebra. I stopped at a supermarket and bough a bottle of hard cider which I enjoyed siting by the waterfront. Unfortunately I missed the window for having lunch (11 am to 2 pm), and by the time I thought about eating something at 5 pm I was informed, with some astonishment at my obvious ignorance of the basic facts of life, that dinner would not be served until 9 pm. Looks like I will go to bed hungry tonight.

The next stage of the trip was going to be a killer, finally saying goodbye to the bay and trudging painfully along the steep climb to Hospital de Bruma, so I decided to cheat and take a bus to Betanzos, and from there a taxi to Hospital de Bruma. Best 30 euros I have ever spent. So I got to the public hostel at 10 am, in front of anyone else, and 30 minutes later a group of 7 young hikers came puffing along. They had left Betanzos at 3 am to make sure they got a place in the only hostel, which because of the pandemic had reduced its maximum capacity to a maximum of 7. Aha, but there I was waiting for the hostel to open at 1 pm, first in line, which meant we were 8 and one of them would not get a place to sleep. Over the next couple of hours many more hikers came along, just to be greatly disappointed and being forced to keep walking to the next town. When the manager came at 1 pm he gave my fellow travelers a little grief, but then he smiled and assured them that all would be well, and we all sighed with relief. Nice old man who, after all paperwork was done, sat with me for a couple of hours discussing everything and nothing in particular.

For no reason in particular I started walking at 5:30 am, in the dark, and enjoyed the full benefit of daybreak at 7 am. Pretty fields all around me. Today was going to be my longest walk, so I had booked a hotel 10 km short of Sigüeiros, but I was too early once I passed it, so I figured out I could complete the walk to this town and then get back. Waste of good leather, really, because the road paralleled the toll highway first and then went through the Polígono Industrial, so I was quite tired by the time I reached the town. I rewarded myself with lunch at a pulperia, where of course I had to have pulpo a la Gallega. Unfortunately it was a ration, rather than a menu, so it was quite expensive (35 euros for the pulpo, 5 euros for the wine, and 5 euros for the dessert). Not that I am complaining, but Spain is no longer the good deal it used to be.

I was too tired to walk back to my hotel, so I took a taxi and arranged for the same taxi to pick me up the following morning to bring me back to Sigüeiros to resume my walk.

The next leg was to bring me into Santiago de Compostela, in what was to be an easy walk, but the approach was through the Polígono Industrial, and later through the suburbia of the city, with no breath-taking views of the cathedral or the old town. But eventually I got there, and once again ascertained that the cathedral is beautiful and I was excited to join the Misa de Peregrinos at high noon. It was not to be, however, because Covid and the reduced numbers allowed in the church. So I missed the mass, and had to ay hello to JC in one of the small chapels that are peppered across the town. I did later visit the cathedral, but skipped the tomb of Santiago, even though 2021 is an Aňo Jacobeo and the tomb is open to the pilgrims.

Santiago is a pretty town, but I am feeling lonely and not inclined to waste money buying souvenirs. I did find a menu restaurant away from downtown where for reasonable money I had an entrée of pulpo and the best fish ever (Dorada al horno).

The following morning I took the long-distance bus to Finisterre. It was a beautiful drive through northwest Galicia, but Finisterre is a good 65 km away (almost all the way to La Coruňa!) so it took a goodly amount of time to get there. The coast, which goes by the ominous name of Costa o Morte, is fabulous and there are many towns on the shores of the ria bays that have very pretty beaches and would be perfect for week-long family vacations.

Galician towns are very attractive, in a Guanajuato style as almost all of them cling to impossibly steep slopes. Lots of houses are built out of blocks of granite and most have cost a fortune. What does this people make for a living, and where had they come up with the money for this expensive style of construction? Spain has definitely taken its place as a part of beautiful Europe.

The bus left me in the town of Finisterre (which incidentally is built on a beautiful porphyritic granite), and from there I had to walk the 2.5 km to Cape Finisterre, where the Lighthouse at the End of the World is located. Because it is the end of the world there is really not much to see past the lighthouse, but it was a good feeling to finally stand there, imagining the travels of bold mariners into the unknown.

Back in town the offerings of enticing seafood were legion, but all of them were superexpensive. On retrospect I should have made it a two-day excursion, spending the night in Finisterre, where there is a very large number of hostels. But alas, I headed back to Santiago, where I arrived at 7 pm. A taxi (7 euros) brough me from the bus station to the huge hostel in Monte de Gozo. It is a bit on the outskirts of Santiago, but it is the best deal in town (20 euros for a bunk bed), and I lucked out by being the only guest in my four-bunkbed room.

My last day in Santiago was a bit of a wash. I spent a good time checking in into my flight the following morning via my cell phone (what a pain, particularly with all the Covid requirements). Afterward I walked to my new hotel in the suburbia of Santiago (in retrospect I should have spent a second night at Monte de Gozo), found where I could take the airport bus (for only 1 euro!), and then walked aimlessly through the university area, which is where my new hotel was located. Pretty part of town. I had my last pulpo a la Gallega dinner before heading to bed!