What an incredible two days.....I feel like I'm using the words incredible and amazing a lot, but this has already been a trip of a lifetime, and there are only so many words that can be used to describe it.
I'm laying in bed, in our attic room of an old hotel, about 400 years old....where the window is in the roof, thinking about how to even begin this blog. This little hotel is about 50 meters from the most gorgeous gothic catedral, where we will end our pilgrimage 6 days from now....and our room is the only one that will sleep three....but it meant climbing three flights of stairs with all of our luggage, to find the "Charlie Chaplin" suite to be more than we could have hoped for. There is a bagpiper who is playing on the steps of the catedral and the early evening chatter from the streets is light and pleasant. The air is cool and the last bits of the afternoon sun are lighting the room.
Tomorrow we take a 7am train to Sarria....about 160 km away....where we will start our walk back to Santiago. The walk will take us through the ancient villages and into the old churches that pilgrims have visited for 500 years. For us to be able to do this, the three generations, sharing such an incredible experience....well, we just know how blessed we are. But....I am getting ahead of myself....back to how we got here!!!!
Yesterday we got up early and headed over to Gibraltar. Though "the rock" is actually a penisula attached to Spain, it is under British control. Because there is limited "flat land" on the rock, the airport and the road entering the city share the same land. Several planes fly out in the morning and so traffic was backed up quite a bit, waiting for the runway to clear so that we could drive out on the rock. We were interested in the tunnels and caves that have been used since the 1500 for various military purposes....but Cait was especially interested in the apes. She had heard me tell stories about them coming right up to you, and was anxious to see if those stories were true........she has no doubts anymore!!!
The road to the top of the rock is tiny, curvy and treacherous. When we got up to the entrance to the first cave, we noticed there were a few apes around. Cait was going to take the baquette we had brought with us and break off some to try to lure one to her. Well, as soon as she got out of the car, a medium sized ape, about 2.5 feet tall, came at her.....and grabbed the end of her bread bag. The tug of war that ensued was hilarious....with the ape winning only because he ripped open his end of the bag and swiped the entire baquette! He then perched on the wall beside us and leisurely ate his breakfast!!! We went in, hiked the cave.....and when we came back out, the funny guy was still eating the bread! Cait and Mom both ended up taking Moroccan bread over and feeding him some of that, just so they could get photos with him. He would put down the baquette only long enough to take the different bread from them.
As we drove around the top of the rock, looking at the tunnels and other sights, a couple of apes jumped on our car. One sat right on the passenger side rear view mirror and kept tapping on the glass trying to get the window open. Mom opened the window just a bit and went for her pocket, where she had some crackers........and we now know where the term ape **** crazy comes from! He was trying everything to get into the car with us....all the time while we are driving on a one lane road at the top of rock of Gibraltar!!!!! Calm heads prevailed....we put all the food out of sight....and the apes lost interest with us. But they certainly made our trip to Gib a lot more fun.
After leaving Gibraltar, we started making our way to Portugal. The towns and villages we went through, both in Spain and Portugal, all looked like they were off of postcards. Everywhere we stopped there was interesting food and people to meet and talk to. Lunch at a little "cafe" that was filled with laborers, where we just sat down and they brought us what they were serving that day....to snacks recommended by a girl at a little roadside store where we stopped....it just seemed like we ran into great things to eat at every turn. We will need this walk to work off some of the incredible food we have eaten.
Even today....when we wanted to eat at a time when everyone else was taking "siesta".....we found a little spot where the woman brought us an assortment of the leftovers from their lunch....and we shared a smorgasborg of yummy food.
We have found that our Spanish allows us to muddle through fairly well...better here in Santiago than in Barcelona and Valencia. There, their Spanish is Catalan, and not only are the words sometimes different, but they speak with a lisp...EVERYONE. For instance, instead of normal gracias.....they say grathiath.....which might not seem like a big deal, but when your ear is struggle to recognize words and phrases anyway, the "th" really throws you off! In Portugal, we pretty much just used smiles and sign language....as our pronunciations and word usage was so bad that no one really could understand us anymore than we could understand them.
We returned our Spanish rental car today....and while driving was sometimes just a bit stressful...it ended up being the perfect way for us to see Spain. We talked and laughed and pointed and giggled and ate our way from the north to the south....across the bottom....and back up north through Portugal. I know we still have some incredible times to come on this trip, but Spain will be a memory to last a lifetime.
The bagpipe music has given way to a flute...and the small talk of people making their way down the streets heading home from work has changed to groups eating at outdoor cafes or strolling toward a local bar. I just can't explain how perfect it is.
No blogs or communication for 6 days.....as we are walking and carrying everything we need on our backs....so a computer is one of the luxuries that is being left behind. I'm so excited to find out what we will learn about Spain, about the history of the pilgrimage, about each other...and mostly, about ourselves in the next few days.
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