Tui

Tui is a border town - quiet and nice. I had the privilege of wandering in its streets for a few hours and be amazed by its beauty. Was grateful for seeing the "closed" churches through the open doors-the only protection for not getting inside were some railings. I liked Tui very much.

The town with no name in my head

Please forgive me but I don't remember the name of this town. I don't even know if it was in Galicia or in Portugal-I would say it was in Galicia, but I cannot be sure 100%. You can imagine that on my way back to Lisbon I stopped 10.000 times, I turned and went back, forth, back, forth and so on so I am trying now to find an excuse, as you can well see :-) The nice thing in this town was that they had some kind of carnival. First I spotted some girls with pink wigs and then all these strangely dressed funny people appeared in front of my eyes. It was fun and very lively. Enjoy.

On the way to Portugal

I wanted to visit a little town, got lost on the way and had to get back. And this is when I stopped and took these pictures that show I don't know exactly what. A nice old man told me to go further to get a a better view-and so I did and I thanked him.

Cape Finisterre

One day I decided to make the trip to Cape Finisterre – it didn’t look like I have to drive endlessly to get there but this was my impression - the road was winding up to that place, the traffic was terrible and I was exhausted. I cursed the day I decided to go to Cabo Finisterre but the view was quite spectacular. I passed by some other nice towns but couldn’t really stop because they seemed to be already “packed”.












I started dreaming about visiting Galicia by motorcycle after seeing an Italian couple all dressed up in black leatheer, very cool and stylish, who seemed to be very relaxed with their small luggage just on the back of the motorcycle and a tiny compact camera that did its job. I liked them.

Santiago de Compostela

Santiago de Compostela - this is the first time that I got out of the car and started to ask around where I am and where I should be. I was lost and tired. I was grateful though for being there but still a little bit panicked. I found my hotel and the guys there were surprisingly helpful-they even parked my car-and kind. I stayed in Santiago a few days wanting to relax and stop driving the car at least for a day. The first thing I got to do was of course to go see the tomb of Santiago de Compostela, his statue and the cathedral. The greatest "religious show" I got to see in my whole life was though seeing the "Botafumeiro" in action :-) I will have to quote wikipedia as I do not know all these strange words. This Botafumeiro is a famous thurible and it is the largest censer in the world (80kg, 1.60m in height). Because there was a mass that day, they filled it with 40 kg of charcoal and incense and started to swing it over our heads. They say it can reach 60km/h and it dispense thick clouds of incense. I honestly prayed that this huge Botafumeiro would not fall over our heads because what I saw there was quite a show-I kept smiling and smiling :-)







There were a lot of pilgrims with their stories and tired legs, with sticks and hats and a big back pack with all needed for a long trip. A little bit too crowded though. I think that usually the statue of the saint is kissed, this time it was only embraced, I did the same and two days afterwards I found out from the tv that the Pope recommended all the pilgrims in Santiago not to kiss the statue due to the swine flue.





I had my “dinner experiences” in Santiago because everywhere I was going to eat, being alone, the waiter was so “kind” to place me at the tiniest table in the most obscure corner that I absolutely hated so I left several times. Once I was so stubborn to go to a nice restaurant that I got in and asked if the dinner was served “no, not now, come back in one hour please because our cook is gone” – well, I got back and the cook was not there yet. So I had to wait still half an hour and at the end another guy comes to me and tells me that I should go to the restaurant next door because the cook was very tired from yesterday and had to sleep ☺ there a Spanish lady prepared something really delicious for me – red peppers filled with fish and rice – it doesn’t sound very good but it was absolutely perfect.




One of the three days I got to stay in Santiago it rained terribly and it was cold – the only thing I wanted to do was to get somewhere indoors and just sit to get warm-luckily it lasted just for one day. I got to taste the “Galician soup”, the Santiago tart and some other local specialties. I was surprised to see that people in Spain DON'T speak any other language apart from Spanish. Nada de nada. I quite understood what they were saying and it was funny, but they didn’t make the slightest effort to speak English, they were losing customers and didn’t care, they just live in their nice and fluffy Spanish ignorance and didn’t mind at all.