Folixa Na Primavera

In Asturian: "Spring Party" more or less, haha. Becky, Jonnie and I went to Mieres (a nearby town) for a little spring festival of sorts, which didn't actually start until 1am mind you... needless to say, I'm exhausted today. Actually I had just finished rushing to get my Tourism project turned in and off we went to the festival I finally got a chance to try some traditional Asturian Cider and it was quite delicious. Becky asked me "do you like folk music?" Well, I told her I didn't know because I imagined that it would be different here.. and sure enough, it really is different than what I was expecting, although I should have guessed I suppose. By folk music here, they really mean mostly celtic. Very interesting.



Becky, Myself, and one of Becky's cousins that lives in Mieres that we met up with while over there.


The entertainment!

I took a short video clip of the band to give people an idea of what it sounded like, but I'm not sure how to post videos here... I'll try to figure it out later.

Today we did some shopping... I actually found a long sleeved shirt at a reasonable price, FINALLY! No skin cancer for me! yay! I also bought another really pretty (albeit a bit more feminine than I'm used to haha) shirt but it is SO comfortable... and it was 50% off. I'm not into this expensive high fashion stuff.

Well just wanted to give you a taste of what I've been up to, but now it is time to EAT!

Around the town of Santiago...

Some of the streets were even narrower than this.. you know, never meant for cars and such, although they still occasionally do have to accomodate cars believe it or not.



Okay honestly, I have never seen so much dead octopus in my life. Apparently octopus, or "Pulpo" is THE thing to eat in Galicia. We didn't actually partake of any while we were there, and honestly, I'm kind of glad we didn't because it scares me a little and I didn't want Merce and Pedro to spend a bunch of money on something for me that I hated.



This photo didn't really come out very well, but I thought it was funny... there were tons of restaurants with little displays like this in the windows.



...you can see what is going on here. Seriously, seeing these little guys swimming around the tank like little sea monsters put me a little on edge, and yet you can see on the sign it says "divina divina divina"! Divine??? I'm thinking "KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT!!!"

Near the Cathedral

This is the door to the Catholic Kings Hotel, a very impressive 5 star hotel situated right next door to the cathedral.


This guy is a "Mimo" who basically stands on this little platform really still-like and pretends to be a statue, until somebody gives him money and then he'll move or do something funny, but is always silent. He actually really caught me offguard, because of course Pedro couldn't resist giving him a few "centimos" (euro cents)


This picture was taken from the steps of the back-door of the cathedral (the first photo I uploaded)... this is in the "silver district", named as such because there are about eleventybillion jewelry stores specializing in silver (okay, I didn't exactly count.. but there were a lot.)
This is the "Xunta de Galicia" (or "Junta" for the Spanish... I was surprised at just how much of the town was actually completely reliant on Gallego instead of Spanish), just across the plaza from the Cathedral. Anyway, this is basically a government building, since Santiago is the capital of the Galicia region (as Oviedo is the capital of Asturias).

The Santiago Cathedral and San Francisco Church

Well SOME people, (I won't mention any names such as Audrey, oops!) think I've been slacking off on the posts, but I have plenty of photos to share from our trip to Santiago de Compostela yesterday!

So, I'll start with the Cathedral. The Santiago Cathedral was the destination of a very heavily-traveled pilgrammage for the Christians back in Medieval times who made the trek on foot or on horseback across Europe. After the whole Black-Plague-thing happened, people had bigger things to worry about I suppose, but nowadays tens of thousands of people make the trip often in the traditional way to get to this cathedral. The Spanish call it "Camino de Santiago", but the English-speaking Catholics might know it better as St. James' Way, since St. James is supposedly buried here but nobody really knows for sure.

This is the back side of the Santiago Cathedral


Inside the cathedral, this is the only spot I was really allowed to take photos, although the other areas of the cathedral were much more ornate, and impressive.


The main front of the cathedral, me along with Pedro and Merce. It is ALWAYS raining in Santiago supposedly. However, when we first arrived, it was actually rather nice outside... so Pedro was like "Bah, let's just leave the rain gear in the car, we're not going to need it, look how nice it is outside!" Of course, he had to "stick a prawn in his mouth" as the Spanish would say, because after we had walked to the main part of the old-town just 15-20min later it was raining and even hailing! Pedro insisted on running back to the car while us women stayed relatively dry under some trees. Don't worry, there wasn't any lightning, and even if there was, it had taller things to strike!


This is another smaller church in the area, the San Francisco Church. Pretty, isn't it? Look how BLUE the sky is, and to think, it was hailing just a few minutes before I took this photo.


More to come!