"The wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round..."

...and around...and around...and around.

This weekend I went to Santiago de Compostela. It is far away. I spent 38 hours on a bus. Worth it? Absolutely.

Santiago de Compostela is a small city in Galicia, the northwestern region of Spain. Everything about Galicia and Santiago is different from Granada - the language (they speak Gallego, not Castilian Spanish), the landscape (rolling green hills, misty rivers everywhere), the architecture (moss-covered stone with red tile roofs), and even the way the people look. Santiago is the endpoint (Compostela) of one of the most famous pigramages in Europe - the Camino de Santiago, or Way of St. James. The remains of St. James were supposedly brought here to Santiago in the early years of Christian history, and are thought to be hidden somehwere in the Cathedral still today. Pilgrams still walk the camino every day, but today it is much less of a religious act, and more of a cultural act or a time of introspection. A fewpeople (inluding my best friend Lonely Planet) told me that this was the most beautiful city in Spain, and I had a free weekend, so Megan and I set off on our epic journey...

We caught the first of many busses for the weekend Thursday night to the bus station, rode the 5 hours to Madrid, changed buses, and arrived at Santiago around 9 am Friday morning, only to take yet another bus to our hostel. The receptionist promplty greeted us with the lovely phrase, "We have a problem". Not something you ever want to hear, especially not coming from your assumed means of shelter in a cold, rainy city, but it is surprising how things like the thought of not having somewhere to sleep don't really phase me anymore. Turns out, they overbooked and we had lost our room for the first night. Normally this would mean we were just out of luck, but this hostel was really nice and had booked us a room in a real live hotel for the same price! So we went to the hotel, checked in, unloaded, and set out on a mission.

There were two things we really wanted to do on this trip: rent bikes to ride on the Camino de Santiago and go trout fishing, both of which we had seen on the Santiago website. So first thing, we headed to the tourism office to inquire about our adventures. Sadly, they had no idea what we were talking about. But they could give us a map, they said. Thanks? Both leads ended up coming up empty, which was sad, but equipped with our new map, we headed out to see the sights. We started at the Cathedral, which is really the only real sight, and stared at the pilgrams as they stared at what they had been walking towards for months. I feel no matter what it was that I was walking towards, it would be a huge let-down whenever I finally got there, but that's just me. Then we grabbed some lunch and wandered around the city some more, following the marked tour on our map. The city was absolutely beautiful. It looked more like an old Irish or Scotish city, or at least what I would imagine one would look like. I'll let you know for sure in a few weeks. That night we had a fabulous dinner of kebabs (they're invading the world, and I'm a ok with it.) and later completely our romantic evening with a delicious desert of Tarta de Santiago in our hotel room, complete with Sufjan Steven's Christmas album playing in the background.

Saturday morning, we got up, checked out of the hotel, checked in to the hostel, and finished our tour of Santiago (which, I must agree, has got to be the most beautiful city in Spain. Take a gander at the photos and see for yourself...). The city felt really homey, and it really made me want to curl up in one of those houses in front of a fireplace with a big mug of real coffee and American football (specifically Alabama football) on the TV. Soon, soon. Around 12, we headed back to the bus station to take a bus to the coast. Even though we couldn't go fishing, we wanted to see the coast, and the tourist lady said it was only 30 minutes away, so off we went. There were 2 towns we were going to visit - Muros, the larger and more developed of the two (supposedly), and Noia, which was a little closer. We drove on back roads, passing through a bunch of tiny little towns in the middle of nowhere Spain on the way to the coast, which was absolutely amazing - even better than renting bikes! After about an hour, we finally reached the Noia bus station, but decided to go on to Muros and stop in Noia on the way back. Expecting another 15 minutes max, we waited to arrive at the Muros bus station. After another hour or so, and a landscape (and a bus) that increasingly lacked population, we became suspicious that we had missed our stop in Muros somehow. But the bus was supposed to be ending in Muros, so we decided to wait a little longer before deciding how the heck we were going to get back. It was not long until we saw the sign (Muros - 17 km in the direction you are not going) that confirmed the fact that we were in fact lost (once again) on public transportation. Just when I think I've got it figured out, my friend PT loves to make sure I know I will never master it. So we played the stupid card (not difficult) and asked the bus driver in our sweetest, most innocent voices, "Excuse me, sir, how long until we get to Muros?". He was not pleased to tell us that Muros was 30 minutes ago, but he reluctanlty called his bus driver friend who was going in the other direction, and he stopped and drove us back to town. Turns out, we didn't stop at the bus station in Muros (why? don't know.), but if we had, we wouldn't have known because it's basically a pier with a bus or two parked on it. We walked around Muros for about 15 minutes, saw a really cool rainbow, lots of pretty boats, and then got nervous about getting back to Santiago, so we got back on the bus and watched the tide go out as we drove along the coast.

That night, because our hostel had a kitchen, and neither Megan nor I had prepared our own food in months, we decided to cook dinner. We went grocery shopping, saw some protest about something regarding the Polish press, and returned to make some made delicious pasta and natilla, our favorite Spanish desert. Once again, we had a nice, romantic night (Ellen, you've got quite an evening to top, here.), and headed to bed early. The next morning we packed up and headed back to the bus station (the part of Santiago we saw most), and hopped on the bus back to Madrid.

Riding to Madrid, though long, was amazing, and absolutly worth the whole trip. We watched while the landscape changed from green, misty hills dotted with lonely cottages and the occasional stone church, to big green mountains, carved by rivers and smattered with tiny villages and farmland, to drier, craggier hills filled with vineyards, rolling into sprawling plains, completely flat, filled with wheat and the occasional a lonely cowboy or shepherd with his flock of sheep, to huge, industrialized farms, stopping in 10 or 12 tiny towns along the way, and just after the sun set over the plains, all of that changed into the sprawling metropolis that is Madrid. I know that sounds like it's from a story book, but I kid you not - it was real. We also saw a very large bull-shaped billboard, a strange rock carving, and a few random castles. They also played the safety video after every time we stopped.


I am back in Granada for 2 days, with more papers to write than will physically fit in that time, and then I leave again Wednesday morning for thanksgiving in England! I'll be with staying with Ellen in Cambridge, cooking the best Thanksgiving feast you can imagine, then we'll be heading to London for touring and Thanksgiving feast #2, and of course the Ironbowl. Nothing will ever beat hayrides and bonfires at the lake, but this Thanksgiving may come pretty close.

I hope you all have a great time with family, enjoying American things like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, turkey, stores that give you change, and football. I will be back in no time!



Ok, this doesn't do any justice to what we saw, but it's all I've got...