Santiago de Compostela - 12 December until 16 December

The Cathedral - this facade is on the Spanish Euro coins.

Santiago de Compostela is a beautiful medieval town with the very famous cathedral at it's centre. The Cathedral contains the remains of Saint James (Santiago), and is one of the main pilgrimage sites for Christians (third in line to Rome and Jerusalem).

The Cathedral itself has an incredibly ornate facade, but inside it is fairly plain - until the final third or so. Then it is a riot of gilded carved wood work. Like most of the churches we have been in, we couldn't take photos, so here are a couple from the Internet and two photos of postcards.

The rest of the town is a mix of churches, monasteries, nunneries, museums and university buildings, plus the expected range of restaurants and tourist shops. We loved it, it was everything you would want in an historic old town. Although our days were shortened somewhat, as we had to stay up so Jane could call Australia to sort out her indemnity insurance (boo!), so we had some fairly late starts.

The central altar - to get an idea of the scale, that statue of Jesus is about life size.  You can get inside the pulpit - I imagine there is a special circle of hell for the person who carved their name into it.

The two organs on either side of the nave.

The colonnade of the building on the other side of the square.

The Cathedral at night.

A building, probably old, and quite likely used for churchy stuff. 

We went to this restaurant, which did an average paella (not a northern dish, apparently) but had an amazing nativity scene....

....which was fairly detailed. Eeeewwwww.

We went for a walk in park. Travellers tip from Morgan - if you don't want to worry about getting mugged, do what I do - and dress like a homeless person.

In a complete contrast, we also visited the Galacian City of Culture. Not finished yet, and so new its Wikipedia page is really small (curses). It was designed by Peter Eisenmann to reflect the topography of the hills and of the old town centre, and to reference the scallop shells that pilgrims traditionally carry (I don't now why, maybe they like scallops? Who doesn't - scallops are yummy).

I described it to Jane as Architecture with a capital 'A'. Once it actually has some people in it, it will be incredible.

I assume this is an enormous skateboard ramp.

Even the cafe was cool.

Libraries rock!

We went to a exhibition of typewriters! 

The pocket type writer - how does it work? No idea. Cute though.

Wiggly.

A typewriter with Japanese characters, all umpty-billion of them.

Weirdest thing ever? They got Michael Winslow (the man of 10, 000 voices) to record the sound effects of the typewriters. I suppose he has had some slow days now the Police Academy movies are finished.

So thumbs up to Santiago.  Now south to Portugal.