Pilgrimages

Dear Family and Friends,

Back when we were in France taking the back road trip we kept seeing these signs.

When we were in Bilbao, we saw tiles like this in the sidewalk.

We have seen these signs or some very similar this whole trip.

It turns out that these signs are marking the way to the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela.  The Cathedral here contains the relics of Saint James.

People have been walking to this very location from all over Europe since about 950AD.

Here are some links Chuck found to share if you are interested in knowing all about this.

http://www.santiago-compostela.net/

http://www.caminosantiagodecompostela.com/

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James,_son_of_Zebedee

We spent most of today walking the streets of this old town and visiting the Cathedral.

Here are some pictures...

The main place to visit and see is, of course, the Cathedral

We went inside, of course, and although photography was discouraged, I had to take a picture of this.

Instead of lighting real candles, if you want to burn a candle, you just drop your money in a slot and an electric candle is lit.

We walked all through the very old town.

The stonework on the buildings were incredible.

Here is a carving on the side of a building showing Mary and Joseph with baby Jesus fleeing to Egypt.

Here is one that is scarry looking.

The streets were very narrow.....just pedestrian streets.

Here is someone we all know and love.

There were a lot of tourist shops.  They all featured items that had to do with making a pilgrimage to this city.
This is a bucket of shells.  The pilgrims, hundreds of years ago, would display a shell to show that they were doing the pilgrimage and people would house them and feed them along their journey.

Here are some of the pilgrim figurines that were for sale.

Here are some stone pilgrims.

A ceramic pilgrim.

And this cute little pilgrim. I really like him. Notice the shell on his hat and the road sign below his left hand showing him the way to go.

They even had walking sticks with shells on them.

We were even fortunate to run into a modern day pilgrim.  This young man had just come into town.  He had walked for eight days from Leon, Spain.

Here he is with Chuck proudly showing off the certificate he got from the church verifying that he had made the pilgrimage.

Here is a close-up of his certificate.

We did detour from our sightseeing when we ran across a winery.  We went inside for a tasting.

The wine maker posed with Chuck, showing off this bread.  I don't know why the bread was important.

Chuck tasted a white wine.  He said it was very good.  He noticed that there was a sign that said you could buy the wine by the liter for only 90 cents.....if you bring your own container.  We didn't have a container with us so we had to miss out on that great deal.

Tomorrow we are going to Lugo on the back roads.  Can't wait.

Love,
Nancy