Well, our relaxing few days in Santiago have come to an end, but we made the most of our time in this wonderful city. We attended a pilgrim mass at the astoundingly beautiful cathedral, ate tapas in bars, shopped, plus walked from one end of the town to the other. You’d have thought we’d have been sick of walking by now, wouldn’t you, but no, we walked many extra kilometres all around Santiago as well. We also took a bus tour to Finisterre and Muxia, which are both on the west coast of Spain. Many pilgrims don’t consider their Camino completed, unless they have walked the additional 100 kilometres from Santiago to Finisterre, but not us.  A bus, we decided, was quite sufficient.

The coastal landscape was quite rugged, with pink granite mountains and scrubby vegetation. There are many, many wind turbines which, while generating a lot of energy, don’t greatly benefit Galicia, as the government redirects it to the rest of the country. Not something the Galicians are happy with, since they still have to deal with the impact of the turbines on the landscape, both visual and physical,which is considerable.

We visited the longest beach in Spain, Senda Verde, which is 8klms long. And we also saw the only waterfall in Europe that flows into the ocean.

The coastline itself is known as the Costa de la Muerte (Coast of Death) due the number of shipwrecks that have occurred along the region. I can see why, with many  rocky outcrops along the coastline, and no doubt many others below the sea level.

Lunch at a country restaurant with the others on our tour, resulted in a recipe for ‘wet rice’ from a couple from Cuba. Similar to, but definitely not to be confused with, paella, I’m keen to try it at home – watch out, Masterchef!!

This morning we flew, very comfortably, with Iberian Airlines to Madrid, a trip of only 50 minutes, to start the next part of our adventure. We are now happily ensconced in the Aspasios Apartments, right in the middle on Madrid and within walking distance to everything, so it’s just perfect. We sat in Plaza Mayor having a coffee, soaking up sunshine, people watching (a favourite pastime). And the Mercado San Miguel is only a 2 minute walk and is renowned for the tapas it offers, so that’s where we headed for dinner. It’s too hard to describe the smell, the variety and the buzz, so I’ve attached photos instead – they can do the talking.

Suffice to say, we won’t be going hungry…

Tomorrow we are going to do the hop on, hop off bus. There is so much to see and do here, it’ll be really worthwhile to sit back and work out exactly what really takes our attention. I’ll let you know how we go…

xx