Pension San Simon Santiago de Compostela

A slow morning saw us arrive in A caruna around 2:30p for a quick tour. A beautiful city where we had an excellent lunch (more kids running through the streets while we devoured raciones and wine. Yum!!) A 6ish departure for our long drive to Llanes in Astoria. We finally ...

We woke up to find ourselves at a very local place. It was the beach the folks from a caruna come to to get away from the city. And most (as in everyone but us) of the people there had "summer" campers. So we made like locals and enjoyed the beach, Everett doing ...

... including real "pilgrims") we were back on the road to A Caruna where Ev had found a seaside campground. Back on Spanish time we had an delightful meal of Spanish tortilla (potato omlette) around 9:30 and the kids were in bed by 10:45. Yikes!!<br><br>                      <br>

... drove to A Garita de Herbeira, the highest cliff in Europe. As we drove up the mountain, we passed wild cows and horses and pretty rolling hills with purple flowers-- I was reminded of the Scottish countryside. However, when we got up to the top, a huge cloud had descended onto the mountain, making it extremely cold, wet, and WINDY! We literally had to bend over double to fight our way across the fields towards the cliff, at which point we realized that A ...

... which was a really cool late-19th century amusement park sort of place. Galicia has a long history of emigration, including thousands of immigrants to Argentina. These emigrants all went to Latin America, made a fortune, and then sent their money back to Galicia, and the park was built with the money of two brothers who did just this. Along with the park, they also funded old people homes, schools and hospitals. The goal of this park was ...

... Hand<br>o BURNIN' LOVE (request)<br>o BORN TO BE WILD (request)<br>o My Love Will Not Let You Down<br>o Waitin' On A Sunny Day<br>o The Promised Land<br>o This Life (request)<br>o Backstreets<br>o Lonesome Day<br>o The Rising<br>o Born To Run<br>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br>o NO SURRENDER (Acoustic)<br>o Land of Hope &amp; Dreams<br>o American Land<br>o Glory Days<br>o Dancing In The Dark<br>o Rockin All Over The World<br>o Twist &amp; Shout<br>o Born In The USA

Well, after a tough transition to life in the dorms in a foreign country, I was excited to get to class on the first day and have all of my questions answered. The informal "meet and greet" and introductory session didn't happen on Sunday night, so there were quite a few of us who were fish out of water (aside from being English speaking visitors in a foreign country). It was pretty crazy when we got to class the first ...

... long-haired Norwegian guy. Actually, it was quite amazing, the variety of people and nationalities represented. The priest started out in painfully halting English, wondering how he might address so many people of so many languages. We whiled away the rest of the time buying food and eating it in a park, taking photos, using the net bar, and then eating more doner kebap.

... and draws attention away from modernity. It doesn't matter how much glass and metal your hotel is made of if all the houses around it have Spanish roofs and have been there for a hundred years. I'm anxious to see if this plays out in other parts of Spain, but for now, this old city drives on toward neon and steel, its granite past shackled to it like an inseverable, beautiful ball and chain.

... converted to a hostel. It was amazing (and yes, we did re-enact scenes from Titanic...) Today Dev and I left Portugal and arrived in Spain. We are in a town in the North-west called Santiago de Compostela...it's very cute there...we walked through an amazing park this afternoon and we visited the Cathedral, which has the most ornate, busy (kind of gaudy) alter I've ever seen...pretty cool though. next up...Salamanca! we'll try and keep this updated... We miss you all!