Santiago De Compostella: I

The amazing feeling of rolling out of the small single bed that was one of many of the single rooms placed on the second floor of the Seminario Menor and being able to luxuriously go through the morning ritual at 8am instead of the regular 7am can not be under described. I'd have happily left things until later, but I needed to check out and wanted to get down to the church for the English Mass in the morning. I seemed to have under estimated my timelines, and as I sat for breakfast decided that I'd missed the better part of the English Mass but would go in for a quick cheeky look before the rest of the Perrigrino's descended on the cathedral.

I made good enough time to arrive at 9.30am and start milling around, from a position in the back I started getting some of the better pictures of the grand altar and various other interesting aspects of the cathedral. It certainly had less sculpture than Oviedo or Lugo had, but at the same time the centre piece was all done up in carved wood with gold gilt, and of course in the centre St. James sculpture with his pilgrims hat.

The rest of the church is indeed beautiful, three entrances, the portico gloria is a separate attraction, and is where the famous story of the creation of the local Galician cheese comes from. It was shaped like breasts, after a keen eyed bishop notices a wry smile on one of the disciples faces, followed the eye line to the opposite end and it falls straight onto the then prominent breast of Queen Esther. The queen was forced to get a reduction, and the cheese thus took its shape from the deprivation of the three dimensional titillation. Or so the story goes. I imagine that a lot of the details were retconned to actually fit a nice little narrative for the new Cathedral.

I stuck around for a bit for morning prayers, but didn't take in more than a perfunctory inspect of the surroundings in order to get my bearings before leaving to catch breakfast at the cafe Jackie said they'd be at. I ordered a coffee and managed to meet on their way out. I had time, though I'd say that you don't want to wait until any later than 11.30am to get in line for the Pilgrims Mass.

Once back inside the cathedral, the seats had begun to fill out, but I managed to sit beside everyone. An elderly couple wanted to sit down though, so in deference to age and after much protesting I gave up my seat and found one further back.

That old saying momentarily flashed into my mine and made me smile. 'Saints in the front, sinners in the back.' I'd happily cloistered myself in with an American couple who'd just completed the Portuguese and started the long process of waiting for the mass to start.

It was then that I noticed something altogether rare, probably hardly ever noticed, but something that I thought was brilliant. All masons in the completion of large stone structures would have marks for identifying all of the stone hewing or carving that worked on and they'd completed. All of the fine work was unblemished, but on the rougher parts of the stone hew pillars my eyes caught one, then two and three, and then multiple, tons of them. The lasting monument that the men who had built the cathedral and probably couldn't even write their own names had immortalized in the surrounding stone. It was touching.

Next the mass started, there was the usual singing and other parts of the Roman Catholic ritual I'm not well versed in but have a general understanding, added by the complexity of not understanding Spanish.

We got a greeting from the priest for the visitors from Oviedo, which was nice. Then there was of course the sacrament, and finally the show stopper. The Bomafumiero a giant incense burner that requires a crew of men to swing, at full clip as much as 70km per hour speeds.

I was curiously taken aback by the fact that I was surrounded by a sea of cell phones in the midst of watching the lighting and swinging process. So I didn't record it. I can only recommend that if you are curious, look it up, or do as I did and see it in person. It's something truly special.

After the mass had completed, I joined Marina who had snuck in earlier at the beginning of the mass and had found seating on one of the column stoops, and we went and did the touristic thing of going to the statue of the saint and hugging him.

As absurd as this sounds, it was like a rather bejeweled Ronald McDonald statue you'd find sitting on a bench outside a Mac's or something akin to that. I suppose it's more fun for kids of the like. I was more interested in the reliquary below.

That was special, it was of course a sealed gilded silver box, but the idea of the who is contained was more important to me than the sculptures and the grandiosity of the building. Here was a tangible connection to history and the man who's revolutionary ideas changed the world.

After the mass and all was said and done, we split up for a period. I to re-book myself into a room at the Seminario, which they only had dorms, and then I wanted to see the Pilgrims museum, which was actually free after 2:30pm for Pilgrims.

It was a nice simplistic museum connected to the history of the whole development of St. Iago as a pilgrimage site, some of the different contending theories, and reasons why.

I basically think from what I'd managed to read that it was essentially an agreement by the Archbishop at the time and Alfonso II to repatriate the bones of James who had been beheaded and buried in Jerusalem in order to gain a pilgrimage site like the ones in Rome, protect a holy reliquary from regional religious instability in middle east, and add a sense of divine backing to the Kingdom of Asturia, as Alfonso II was actively fighting wars against the Moors in the south of Spain.

As such the two contrived to have found the bones in a tomb that had been originally been built, most likely for a heretical bishop that had been killed in Germany by Charlemagne.

Don't take my word for it, that is merely what I managed to gleam from a basic examination of the two or three pages of historical facts present.

Thankfully the blog is not a historical one.

The rest of the day was spent touring Santiago, looking at the variety of different tourist goods available, and I admit I did purchase a very nice hand carved shell in brass to go on my makeshift para-cord bracelet.

Dinner was in a crowded little restaurant where I got to try a different type of fried squid, which was exceptionally good. Along with fried green peppers as an appetizer, and of course the traditional vino tinto.

Later more walking, more wine outside of an Irish bar, this is where we all wished good night. Marina came with me down to the Seminario grounds for a bit to watch a rock festival that had popped up in the day time and I'd mentioned early. Basically it was a lot of different rock bands, including Spain's answer to ACDC.

We parted ways around 11:30pm, and I psyched myself up for sharing a room with 50 other people, all in single beds.

Thanks to my patrons. Brendan Mills, Renee Rushbrook, Carlos Ara.