I Didn't Know Mass Could Be Such a Swingin' Place!

We checked into the hotel, celebrating a two night stay in the same hotel, not having to repack and move each day (which is fine, that’s part of the program).  Six of us went for lunch on a pretty little square filled with flowers.  The food was good and the beer was better.  Even though it was lunch, I quoted “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down” to myself to justify the second beer.  (“The beer I had for breakfast so I had one more for dessert.”)

After some shopping, it was time for a break back at the hotel, including a much needed shower.  The hotel is an a converted monastery that was founded by St. Francis of Assisi after he did the camino pilgrimage.  

There is beautiful old stone work outside and in, at some point inside you walk over heavy glass protecting archaeological diggings.  There are half floors!  For example, on the second floor you might be on level 2A or 2B, which are separated by about four feet.  Getting off on the third floor, there were only five rooms on our corridor, but floor 4A was only 4 feet above ours.  It obviously went a different direction than our floor.

At 5:30 pm, we all met and walked over to the cathedral next door.  There was a wedding going on at the church next door.  It was fun to see the different dresses (most of the men were wearing blue suits, so that was not interesting) and the general sense of celebration.

We met our guide for Santiago (Spanish law only allows you to guide what you have trained for, so Aner can guide the camino, as well as Bilbao and San Sebastian, but not Lugo, Santiago, or Oviedo, for instance.  In Lugo I tried to ask his opinion about a fact, and he refused to answer, being too smart for my trickeration.  

Our Santiago guide talked quite a bit about the cathedral, the stone carvings on the outside, and then we walked around the whole building and he talked about the squares, the traditions, and the other buildings.  I could tell you more, but you will just have go to Santiago yourselves.

By 7pm, we were back at the entrance to the cathedral.  We went in and walked around.  Seats for the 7:30 pilgrims service were not to be found, so people were sitting on column platforms or against the walls.  

We vacillated on staying for the service.  Aner found us and took us to the unmarked basement crypt of St. James.  He tried to talk us into staying, and described the incense swinging.  Apparently it takes five priests tugging mightily to swing the huge, ornate incense thingie (I’m betting there is a technical term for it, but I have no idea, so “thingie” will have to suffice).  The thingie weighs 50 kgs, which is a lot and they get it going at 90 kph, or 55 mph.  We were intrigued, so we thought we might stay.

Before the service, we saw there was a very short line to go hug St. James (a shoulders and up bust that sits above the altar.  You climb up the narrow stairs, hug the partial statue, and walk past the visibly bored priest back down.

We found some wall to sit by, and decided to play it by ear on staying or not.  The first 50 minutes of the services were maddeningly slow.  As I have mentioned, I do not know Spanish and I’m not Catholic, so I couldn’t even fake it.  

Having been in Charleston, SC for the total eclipse of the sun, we joked about the impending time of totality (when the sun is completely eclipse by the sun).  Well, I can tell you this – it was nearly as big a thrill watching the incense thingie (burner? – yeah, I will go with that) fly through the air, going high up at an incredible rate of speed.  And, since it was so big, the incense came out in large clouds, and the whole cathedral was sweet smelling.

The mass is held daily, and the incense ritual was started back in the day because the pilgrims had a certain odor about them.  Between the dust and the mud and the sweat and the lack of Old Spice deodorant in days of yore, the incense was necessary.  These days it draws people in to the daily service.

After that we slipped out amongst the crowds, and headed off to dinner.  It was the other night, besides Oviedo, when we did not have a group dinner.  I figured it was just the two of us, but we ran into two other couples from the tour, and suddenly we were six (bigger groups are better with tapas!).  

A recommended restaurant was actually closed, so we went into the very next restaurant, a cool, rabbit-warren like stone building.  We had great food and great wine, eating garlic shrimp as good as made by Jose Andres, having pork bites, salad, drinking Albarino white and Mancia red.  (Yes, I drank the white wine (before switching to the red) – Albarino is simply my favorite white wine, and as much as I enjoy it at home, it is even better in the Galacia region where it is grown.

I never had Mancia wine until the night before, but it is so good I got two bottles for the table, which we all enjoyed.  Ironically, the only thing that was not that good was the Percebes, a rare sea barnacle found on the Galacian coast and in coastal western Canada.  It’s a quite a delicacy, but apparently prime time is in the spring.  These Percebes were very small and not very tasty.  I did find a few larger ones, which I shared with the others so they would know I was not completely off-base when raving about Percebes.  Even those were small compared to what I get in the spring from Canada, but they at least had some flavor.

We went back to the hotel, where we shared one more bottle of wine, a Rioja.