July 15, 2019 – It was kind of a lazy morning this morning. We got up and got ready to go, ate breakfast but then got on our computers to get some things done. We planned to get out by 9:00 but by the time we finished up it was nearly lunch time. I think we needed a little bit of down time.
We thought we would head back to the cathedral to see if we could get a glimpse of the Portico de Gloria. We weren’t able to see anything, so we went back to the museum shop and see if there were any spots open on tours today. There was nothing open and the nice museum lady suggest we go online to see if anything had opened up or come back tomorrow at 9 AM to see when the afternoon English tour would be. We were leaving in the morning so that wouldn’t work for us. The line was short to see the St. James tomb and statue so we decided to go in again. As we were standing there waiting, a older lady and 10 of her family members tried to take cuts… Wayne has had enough of the rudeness and told her no way…haha. We should have let them get ahead of us because for the next 15 minutes they were right behind us, bumping and rubbing up against us…literally… they had no concept of personal space, which we have found in Spain to be the norm. We were in disbelief and laughing about it and and a couple of times I turned around to give them “my look”, but it did not faze them. It was evident that they were talking about us in an unrecognized foreign language, which sounding a bit like Spanish (maybe Portuguese or Basque), but what came over loud and clear was when one of the little 80 year old men called Wayne a “PUTO”. haha. We just turned around, looked at them and smiled.
We left the cathedral and walked over to the Mercado de Abastos de Santiago or the “Market”. This mercado is a cool 300 stall indoor and outdoor market that sells meat, fish, produce, flowers, wines and cheeses. The area surrounding the mercado is lined with restaurants. Most of the mercado was closed already (they are only open half day and then clean up and go home for siesta). Some of the women who run a fish market were hosing down their stalls. There was a flower stall, a couple of produce stands and a cheese place open though. Some girls at one of the cheese shops must have been bored because they hooked us in and gave us tastes of just about everything they had to offer. They gave us many samples of all of the local and traditional sausages and cheeses and we bought a few things. Something funny to note…Wayne asked them which sausage and cheese was their favorite and they both said they were vegan…haha… We found that to be funny.
botafumerio and the St. James
hugging statue
We went to a shop in the Mercado and bought some things to add to our sausage and cheese and went over to Alameda Park to have a quick picnic and bite to eat before Wayne had to get to work. On the way back to our room we stopped for a gelato.
We spent the rest of the evening with Wayne working, me going to do all of our laundry at the nearby laundromat and packing up for our departure tomorrow. We both really loved this town.