A Guiri in Galicia - part one

Galicia - the bit just above Portugal

Friday March the 18th
For ages now I've studiously avoided using Ryanair for any of my infrequent visits to the UK, something to do with their continued blithe indifference to the paying punters that made smug CEO Michael O'Leary one of Ireland's wealthiest individuals I guess. However, my principled stance against Britain's least favourite airline collapsed like a pack of cards when faced with a straight choice between a seventy five minute shuttle on a blue and yellow aeroplane or an eleven hour car journey to the north west corner of Spain. By road, the trip between home in Elche and Cee in Galicia is just sixteen kilometres shy of being a coast to coast drive the entire width of the country from east to west. As the Iberian Peninsula goes, you probably couldn't pick a longer trip to make using four wheels, so Alicante to Santiago de Compostela via the aerial route it was then.

As a city to visit, Santiago is right up there with Spain's very best, and wisely, we chose to spend three or four hours exploring before heading off to our eventual destination a further hour or so away. Boasting ten centuries of history, Santiago is  home to ninety five thousand permanent residents, a number swelled by more than thirty thousand students, in town to study at the prestigious University, (USC). Thankfully, most of them were attending lectures as we mooched around the place, marvelling at the sights, sounds and breathtaking architecture, (both old and new), unhindered by throngs of people. Apparently, the place is rammed in the summer so clearly we chose a good time to pop by. With beautiful parks, gardens and paved squares too numerous to mention, Santiago de Compostela has the lot, and, as befits one of the most important places in the world for Christian pilgrims, the city is home to the most astonishing Cathedral.

Incredible

Set to one side of the Plaza de Obradoiro opposite the imposing Government and town hall building, (which kind of reminded me of Buckingham Palace), Santiago Cathedral is the final resting place of the Apostle Saint James whose remains lie within. This majestic edifice is also the eventual destination for various pilgrimage routes that originate all over Europe, the so called Camino de Santiago which, loosely translated into English reads, The Way of Saint James. Begun in 1075 and finally completed during the twelfth century, Santiago Cathedral was the first to be built in Galicia and is now a designated World Heritage Site. So it should be too. I'm not a religious man, (although I sometimes pray Spurs don't lose the north London derby), but Santiago Cathedral, which dominates the city skyline, is absolutely stunning. So go and see it!

After all that walking around, the pair of us and José, our genial guide and host for our weekend away, began to feel slightly peckish and not surprisingly José knew just the place. A stones throw away from Buckingham Palace and the big church, tucked away in a small back street, was the kind of tiny cafeteria-cum-restaurant you could easily walk past. We didn't, we walked in and I was about to receive the first of quite a few pleasant surprises. Five minutes after seating ourselves at the bar, a plate of pork slices in a rich sauce on a bed of deep fried potato crisps arrived so we eagerly tucked in. The next brief conversation went like this.

A really dangerous animal on a plate

"Hmm fantastic lomo" (pork), I said to José
"What lomo?" he replied
"This" I replied, waving a large slab of meat around on the end of my fork
"That's not lomo, it's Cocodrilo"
"CROCODILE" explained the girlyfriend trying hard to hide her smile.

Bloody lovely it was.


Still to come - firewater, cheese shaped like a tit, the shipping forecast and oil slicks.