A Vacation In Mountain View

Some time ago our friends J&K G. lost their cat Beaner who was a very respectable age and who was too old to be saved even by a diet of French ham and pate' and drinking directly from a faucet. After a suitable wait, J&K adopted a rescue cat, now named Cleopatra.
    Cleo is a nice cat and a long cat. Cleo is so long she can easily catch her own tail should she be inclined. Measured from the ground up, Cleo is an average medium sized cat. Measured nose to tail, Cleo is a cat and a half. Front to back there's a lot of Cleo to go around.  Cleo is a happy cat, but still shy and J&K were worried about putting her in a kennel while they vacationed in the desert SW, so we volunteered to house-sit Cleo while they were gone
   (A largely free vacation in the San Francisco area was hard to take, but dw and I sacrificed for friends)

So we drove to Mountain View (just south of San Francisco) and stayed in their lovely condo in a lovely neighborhood and took care of their lovely cat -- which was very easy since Cleo would either stare at us from as far away as possible, or hide under a bed or the couch. And as a courteous cat, Cleo didn't express displeasure with any misplaced poop or vomit. Easy cat patrol.  

dw and I are in training to walk another section of the Camino (I'll write about that in a later blog) so most days we took long walks -- some in the Santa Cruz Mountains, some on urban routes. We walked to Stanford University (10 miles), and across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito (9 or 10 miles -?-), and after visiting a friend we walked around Pacific Heights (8 miles or so)

 agave in Palo Alto

The route we took to Stanford passed through modest neighborhoods, with modest houses, largely one story or one and half -- 900 or 1200 square feet -- small yards all very nice and middle class, and according to the occasional real estate flyer we saw -- all priced at $3,000,000 to $6,000,000 (The expensive houses (Steve Jobs lived in the general area) are largely hidden with hedges and walls) -- It's a different world. 
    Stanford's art museum is better than I thought it would be (and it's free) -- (even for Stanford, which is not a poor school) with a large collection of Rodin, including maquettes which show how some of his pieces evolved. A bunch of world ethnic stuff and the standard classic stuff and a new annex with modern art. (After looking at a thousand "Madonna col Bambino"s or a thousand "Saint Sebastian With a Hundred Arrows And an Axe In His Head" modern art is refreshing.)

In San Jose we lucked into a tour of the Cathedral. The chatty docent was happy to pass on bits of interesting gossip (old and new) and was very informative. The church has an unusual Greek Cross shape, with the altar in the center (church in the round) and in it's present shape dates back to 1876 with assorted repairs over the years.
   We also went to the San Jose Art Museum. The SJAM is entirely modern art and has a very small permanent collection. Mostly they seem to host temporary exhibits. We lucked into a Diana Thater video and light installation exploring the relationship of our galaxy and the dung beetle. It occupied several large rooms and featured four videos of zooming stars projected on a wall and a dung beetle projected on the ceiling, and other walls draped and lit with glow-in-the-dark blue light and in the center of one room a big blue glow-in-the -dark box with a door (which I touched, even though dw said I shouldn't)  To be truthful, we didn't quite get the connection between a dung beetle and the galaxy even though (according to the artist's statement) Thater has long been fascinated with the dung beetle and the galaxy (compare and contrast)!  The gravitas of the installation escaped us.
    The dung beetle has a near tragic and little known history. Many thousands of years ago the dung beetle, an ordinary beetle at the time,  was mouthing off to Kushiel (the beetle was kind of a low key jerk) and Kushiel finally said, "Eat shit and die!" so the beetle had to. -- The dying part takes some time which makes the "eat shit" part more tragic. 

We took a train into San Francisco, then walked across the Golden Gate Bridge and on to Sausalito. The walk was enjoyable. A fair number of people were also walking across the bridge but it wasn't too crowded, and the view was wonderful. Bits of fog moving in and out, boats (motor and sail, and tour) moving about with a few sailboats being amusingly incompetent (one lost control of his spinnaker, another seemed to get a good whack from his boom when he came about). On the north end a couple of seals were nosing about the rocks -- all in all the walk was much more interesting than our average training walks.  The walk from the bridge to Sausalito was along a road with light traffic.
     We wandered around Sausalito: had a good pizza for lunch, walked around the docks and looked at boats (if we sold everything we own we could outfit some of them with new sails), and checked out art galleries --- The Great Bay Area Artist Colony of Sausalito. What a joke. 95% of the stuff wasn't just garish kitsch, it was bad garish kitsch. And naturally all of it was grossly over-priced. I get particularly annoyed at places which pretend giclee is anything other than ink-jet printing. We have seen much higher quality work in Ashland and Astoria, let alone Portland.
     We took a ferry back to the city -- the windows were scratched and filthy but the weather was good enough to stay on the open deck. All in all a lovely day with 9 or 10 miles walking.

Another day we visited an old college friend, JC (he's my age, almost to the day). He has some sort of mental thing going on -- he's lost a large part of his short-term memory -- the kind of thing Oliver Sacks might have written about. He's fully aware of his loss, and while much of the time he converses like the witty and intelligent  person he's always been, he will repeat the same question time after time, each iteration separated by a few minutes. He lives in an assisted living place which seems to be a good arrangement, and which he needs because he really can't safely wander around unsupervised. His situation is sad and yet he seems content enough. Much of what he was remains and he has contented himself with his present life. Of necessity he lives in the moment and he seems to be OK with that. 
     After the visit we did a mansion tour of Pacific Heights, including a walk-by of the Spreckels (of Spreckels sugar fame) Mansion, now occupied by Danielle Steele -- who knew that a crappy romance-novelist could make so much money.   

Photo from the web

After picking up J&K from the airport we started the drive back to Portland, stopping for the night in Yreka. Before I've only driven past Yreka, at most stopping for gas, but this time we looked at the downtown and it's an appealing, turn of the 20th century area, that so far hasn't been killed by an edge-of-the-freeway shopping mall. The downtown actually has two Thai restaurants, leaving Bismarck, N.D. as the only town in America without a Thai restaurant.  Even Ely, Nv. has a Thai restaurant. It's owned and operated by one woman, who cooks, waits tables, delivers takeout (!) does dishes, etc. -- all by herself. And the food is good. A couple of years ago, we entered the café, sat down and waited. There didn't seem to be any activity and we were getting restless, finally two couples at another table said: "She's just out delivering some pad thai to the Wilkersons, she'll be back in a few minutes."
   "Oh," we said. "Is the food any good?" (thinking -- What!? there's only one person here?)
   "Yeah", they said, "She does a real good job. She runs this place by herself and she's a real good cook."
    And so she was -- leaving Bismarck with no excuse at all. 
   
    A flyer I picked up in Yreka:  "Waiting to be seen by a doctor at the emergency room can be stressful, especially when out of town. With the Dignity Health North State hospitals, you can visit our website and select a projected arrival time at any of our emergency rooms. Spend less time in the waiting room and more time at your hotel, office or anywhere that is convenient."
     So if you're in a traffic accident, for example, you can whip out your laptop, schedule an arrival time and then go to the nearest bar for a beer and a bump while you wait for your ER appointment.  With just a little planning, you can be sure your underwear is clean or that you're wearing your new bra. Have your next accident in Northern California and THINK AHEAD! Scheduling your ER visit a week ahead of time is not too soon. Folks, planning is no accident. 

JOKE OF THE DAY: "OMG, OMG!! Amelia's? On Alberta? They sell gluten-free lipstick!!!" ---- (really --- at least according to a sign in front of the store)

WORD OF THE DAY: "mouton enrage'" -- literally, angry sheep. (French -- in honor of our upcoming trek through France) --- a normally mild and calm person who suddenly becomes uncharacteristically angry. 

A MOMENT FROM HISTORY --The Oregonian (4/4/2011):  (Shirley, Mass.)  One man was killed and another injured when the two fell out of a restroom window of a tour bus that was returning from a brewery in New Hampshire, Massachusetts State Police said Sunday. --- The two were believed to have been mooning  passing traffic. --- Police said they believe alcohol was a factor.

And so it goes.  DJA  


 

Camino de Santiago, part VI -- fini -- Sights and Sounds

We almost always started walking before dawn and in each small village, somewhere in the distance,  a dog would be barking, sometimes two, but usually just one. One lonely dog warning the village that once again the wily peregrinos were afoot and planning to murder a poor dog who was doing his best. Since each village had its alarm dog and the peregrinos passed through each day, apparently all the dogs escaped the morning carnage but just in case, each morning they were on the alert. Farm dogs, on the other hand, were much more casual: Even when greeted with a cheerful "Buenas dias, perro" they didn't raise their head. One cow dog emeritus was comfortably laying in the doorway of the Alto do Poio albergue -- and didn't move (or raise his head) when ten or fifteen peregrinos stepped over him.
     A rooster or two would chime in but they didn't sound like they were worried about landing in a peregrine's frying pan, rather they were telling the ladies that they were up and ready for love. 

After a rainy day walking to El Ganso, the weather cleared in the afternoon and the walkers (including us) hung our day's laundry. While it was drying, I wandered around the village (one main street of four blocks, one cross street of two blocks) looking at the few occupied houses and the many ruins. I passed a young woman doing her laundry and quietly singing "O mio babbino caro" (Gianni Schicchi) -- That's the music that swells whenever a sweeping view of Tuscany appears on TV --  It was such a quiet, peaceful and intimate moment I felt as if I would be intruding if she realized I was listening. I walked on, but slowly and I hoped inconspicuously.
     We walked through Viloria early Sunday morning. It was very quiet, no traffic, no one stirring except for one tan dog who followed us for two blocks and then lost interest. I stopped by the village fountain to get a rock out of my shoe and dw walked on, getting a hundred yards ahead. As I walked by an open door I faintly heard a guitar playing Romance de Espana -- so fitting of the time and place.

We thought it remarkable how few wild animals we saw. Some birds, including LBJs (little brown jobs) crows and magpies, an occasional hawk or buzzard -- no game birds although there were some, since hunters with dogs were out in a few places and we heard a shot or two. We saw no deer, coyotes (or the equivalent), foxes or anything similar -- odd since we were usually walking before dawn when we would have expected to see something. (and we tended to walk quietly, without talking, singing, humming or making any other sundry noises)
     At one point I was following a couple of English




guys who were yakking about economics or some such when suddenly one of them blurted out: "Look! Another slug!" Which indicates how few wild animals were available to watch. Two women we met claimed they saw a bunny. We were skeptical.
     In some areas cows were plentiful, including cows with bindis, and cows with horns.

Generally, the weather was very good, although some days were too hot in the afternoons. But some days it did rain, rain a lot, rain all day. 
    

Some of the people we met and particularly enjoyed:  Sophia and Sophia ( young Italian girls, walking with their families), Bernt and Ulrich (German, having a long walk), Gunilla (Swedish, divorce), Hue (Korean, worried about being old and unmarried -- she was 28), Sarah and Jill (U.S. -- young women having an adventure), Natalia (Ukraine, worried about her family), Steve and Tim (U.S. --divorce and lost his son), and a French couple (both one year older than I -- we would intersect every couple of days, and each time the man would exclaim: "Ore-e-gone!" -- and the woman smoked, which annoyed dw since the woman was older and smoked and still moved right along.)  The Camino is remarkable for the ease of meeting, connecting, and then parting from a wide variety of people.

BOOKS: Amy Falls Down (Jincy Willett):  I first read Jenny And The Jaws Of Life (by Willett) when I saw it was strongly recommended by David Sedaris. Since then I've read her next two novels and now "Amy". I wouldn't call Willett a humor writer but she can be outrageously funny. "Jenny" is a collection of short stories and her other three books are novels. In the novels Willett's main characters are clearly an autobiographical/fictional mashup. I particularly enjoy Willett's word choices and sentence constructions, and how she lards the pages with (frequently irrelevant to the story) asides:
      "(Amy's) thoughts wandered, (his) words reminding her how, as a child, even while being terrorized by Krafft-Ebing, what frightened her most about the sexual act was the probability that she would not be able to read while it was going on."
     Commonly I put in a book entry just as a notation of what I'm reading. Jincy Willett, however, is an author I really recommend.    And so it goes.  DJA










 

Astoria For Valentine's Day (and we discuss HOT AIR)

Actually, we went several days before Valentine's Day but the romantic thought was there. It was a low budget mini-trip. We stayed in a motel a mile out of town. The Crest Motel is on a bluff and has a great view of the river. (Our lower priced room had a couple of trees in the way but the view was good enough) And we brought food from home to nuke for dinner.

We did buy a couple of excellent lunches. (Astoria Coffee House & Bistro, and Bridgewater Bistro) We toured the Flavel House, (the exterior is very nice, the interior is more ordinary -- it's basically a standard Queen Anne house), we window shopped, and looked at a couple of very good art galleries (neither of them had a single painting of crashing waves -- back lit, sap green -- in sight) 

From the motel we walked three miles to and from town. We looked at and listened to the sea lion dock. (A dock in the harbor that has been abandoned by boats and conceded to the sea lions) The dock provided a fun moment: The sea lions overloaded one side of the dock and it flipped over. There was a great flurry of barking, squawking, and diving into the water until they all realized they panicked about nothing so there was another great round of barking, squawking, pushing and shoving until they were all resettled. (Quit shoving! I'm going to bite you so bad! I was here first! Get your fat ass off me! etc. -- so it goes in the sea lion world)

We watched the tide rotate four anchored ships. We watched one ship weigh anchor and leave for Portland. Another came in and anchored where the one had left. Two entered and headed directly for Portland (one for grain, the other a car carrier)

Low key describes the trip.

During the drive, we somehow came to discuss things fundamental. dw said it can be very annoying when one's pooper doesn't work properly. "What's the problem? It's just a pipe -- you eat, the food gets mushed up, and the residue comes out the other end. Why is that so hard?"
     I pointed out that one's arse is actually talented: "It can tell the difference between a fart and a log, for example."
     "Not always. What about a wet fart, or a fart with a surprise?"
     "OK, it can occasionally make a mistake, but it always does its best."
     "And I guess doing its best is all you can expect from an asshole."

I did say it was a low key, low budget, low inspirational trip.

BOOKS: The Bear -- History Of A Fallen King (Michel Pastoureau) Fairly interesting -- a chronicle of the bear in European myth and legend and how Christianity suppressed pagan worship of the bear. Pastoureau has the habit of literally asking questions and then answering them -- a device that annoys me but the book has some moments: "Archbishop Hincmar of Reims (845-882) vigorously denounced 'vile games with a bear' " --- Alas we don't get any details about the vile games so we must vigorously imagine some, keeping in mind that bear-baiting and other bloody "sports" weren't considered vile.
     And Le Petomane (Jean Nobain and F. Caradec) -- a biography of the Fartiste (a professional farter) Joseph Pujol, whose stage act included farting various sound effects and farting songs such as "O Sole Mio". 

JOKE OF THE DAY: I tried and failed to find a good fart joke, so this will do: (for emergency room nurses and EMTs everywhere) What did the green grape say to the purple grape? "BREATHE DAMMIT, BREATHE"

HISTORY: For punishment of malefactors, Delaware kept the pillory until 1905, and the lash until 1972.

WORD OF THE DAY: "Oojah" -- A thing whose name one cannot remember, does not know, or does not wish to mention. My life is full of oojahs.     And so it goes.   DJA

Camino de Santiago, part V -- End of the Trail

We left Astorga and walked towards the Western mountains and a black stormy sky. After a half an hour we didn't bother to walk around puddles, our feet were so wet from the rain and the run-off from our ponchos a puddle or two didn't matter. There was an up-side, by the time we reached the albergue our shoes were spotless as if washed in a machine. A couple hundred miles of trail dust was gone with no trace left behind.

The next couple of days we were in the Maragato region. The mountain people go back to the 7th century and the Visigoths. Now the culture is dying and the villages largely deserted and crumbling. Very picturesque but sad and desolate and odd because the land itself looked healthy with obvious farming and grazing throughout the area. Absentee owners I guess.
   The first albergue in Foncebadon had a large picture of that bug-eyed, pompous old fraud Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh displayed on a wall. I muttered to dw "We can't stay here, not with that on the wall." She agreed and we went to a different place a few blocks away.  The Bhagwan place was a woo-woo crystal power sort of inn, the second place was newer and nicer.

We weren't yet doing a count-down, noting the kilometer markers fall to double and then single digits, but we did note entering Galicia, land of the Celts and the last region of the walk. There were some differences: Some spellings are different with a lot more "x's" used (but much of the political graffiti was still in English -- as a neutral language, I think) and "O" something or other was a common name, such as a bar we passed -- "O'Castro" -- Alas, I really wanted to see a Celtic cross or two but there weren't any.

At this point there were a couple of architectural changes. The village churches were mostly fronted with a false front and three bells, the sort of thing seen in every spaghetti western ever made (no tumble weeds blowing around though). And many of them had a sort of silo arrangement on one side of the front. We didn't go into any of the siloed churches, but I think the silos contained a spiral staircase which accessed a bell-ringing platform behind and just below the bells.
   The roofs were mostly slate, including some that were obviously  split by an amateur: someone picked up some chunks and split his own shingles.  (the western mountain range, the Galician Massif, seems to be a huge pile of slate).
    A few buildings had a thatch roof, surprising to us -- at first we thought they were tourist kitsch -- but we read that thatch was another traditional roof.

   And another architectural feature of sorts: stork nests. They were everywhere. The churches commonly had two to four. Chimneys were capped, as were antennas and power poles. Belying the fable we didn't notice armies of small children idling about.

After we had passed the 100K mark and were definitely on the countdown, I asked dw: "Now that we only have a few days left, how do you feel about this being over?"
   There was a significant pause, and then she said: "You're asking me about how I feel?"
   I admit exploring feelings aren't a favorite thing of mine, but hey, I can do it every five or ten years for a few minutes anyway.
   We discussed the end for awhile and concluded that I was more prepared to move on to the next thing than was dw. Mostly because I have more things at home to occupy my time. Even so, for both of us, the Camino was (in a quiet way) one of the great events of our lives.

At Sarria the short-timers joined the trail. You only need to walk the last 100K of the trail to get a certificate of completion, and we found a large percentage of them were loud and rude on the trail. Walking several abreast, cutting in front, stopping and blocking the whole trail -- consistently annoying. (and the very worst of the bunch were on bicycles) We came to look forward to times of heavy rain because the short-timers would disappear into their buses and taxis. A lot of them were catered walkers -- not carrying packs, and (I think) not actually walking the full 100K. I think many of them would ride a bus that would stop at a couple of places, the riders would get their credentials stamped, and then they would drive on. In one town we saw a bit of graffiti: "I like peregrinos, I hate tourists" Apparently my thoughts about the short-timers, the tourists, wasn't unusual.

Portomarin is a town relocated to make way for a dam and its reservoir. The austere church was moved by disassembling it, numbering the stones and then rebuilding it higher up the hill. It's as unusual as the picture would indicate, and it has the proportions of a brick lying on its side. We met Ulrich (from Orisson, our first stop) -- who had also taken a bus. He was hobbling around on a swollen foot and waiting for his walking partner, Bernt, so they could finish together.

Palas De Rei, another of the last towns we stayed in had its own brand of oddness. We were walking around looking for an appealing restaurant or a bakery or deli, when there was a very loud explosion. It sounded like several  sticks of dynamite exploding. We truly thought it was either a terrorist bombing or a huge factory explosion -- but we immediately saw the locals weren't concerned at all. They were sitting at outdoor cafes, having coffee or beer or tapas and nobody even flinched or looked up. I have no idea what it was, but about every half an hour or so, until nine in the evening another blast would rattle the city.
     Later we heard a loud loudspeaker -- it was of poor sound quality and we couldn't understand it of course, but we thought it was an angry political rally. Again the locals were unconcerned. They sat at their outdoor tables talking and drinking and ignoring the din. We decided it was safe, that we wouldn't get involved with an angry separatist mob (An element in both the Basque region and the Galician region are trying to separate from Spain) so we went looking for the source. It was a classic Punch and Judy hand puppet show. It was great. The audience was mostly little kids (with parents standing on the side), and they were really into it. Yelling warnings to the hero when he was going to be eaten by a shark, laughing at the jokes. The show was fun, and it was fun to watch the kids reacting.

    It was raining the next morning when we left, but we did enjoy the street lights that looked like Christmas decorations but were a permanent feature.

At Salceda, just two days before the finish, we met Tim and Steve. They were a couple of submarine engineers walking the trail having been inspired by the movie "The Way". Tim had lost his son some time earlier and when he saw the movie he decided he wanted to do the Camino. Steve was recently divorced. They both were seeking some sort of resolution for their lives. And as it happened, they both were fun to talk with, and they were vastly impressed with my age. I was duly pleased.
   (I didn't mention Dan though I immediately thought of him -- for some reason it didn't seem appropriate.)

We stopped at Monte del Gozo after our last full day. It was another day of pouring rain, and although we could have made it to Santiago (Monte del Gozo is only four miles from Santiago) we decided to wait and arrive in Santiago in the morning -- giving us a full day to find lodging and food and get our certificates.
   Arriving in Santiago was satisfying and moving, but neither of us felt a great surge of emotion. We felt it was a quieter moment than a climatic event. Satisfaction, to be sure, but more of an integral part of our lives rather than a passage with a beginning and an end.

When we were walking towards the cathedral, clad in our broad brimmed hats and ponchos, carrying our packs (dw carried her pack the last few days) I noticed several tourists taking our picture. We were pleased. (Rick Steves mentions watching the peregrinos arrive as an attraction in Santiago)

 The last of the path markers: directly in front of the Cathedral. 

We met a delightful French couple (about our age, who we met repeatedly during the last two weeks), Bernt and Ulrich, Tim and Steve, and one of the Korean women, all earlier stages of the walk -- another pleasure at the end.   We spent two days in Santiago, and four days in Madrid. And then home.   

"Europe was born with the Camino de Santiago" --- Goethe
  
JOKE OF THE DAY: Cigarettes are like gerbils. They're both harmless until you put one in your mouth and light it.

BOOK OF THE DAY: How Architecture Works (Witold Rybczynski) WR proposes and answers questions about the good, the bad, and the ugly in architecture. He discusses how design and construction work and how they are related in a building. I wouldn't suppose everyone would agree with everything he says (I don't), but if you're interested in architecture I'd recommend this book.

WORD OF THE DAY: Purring -- not involving a cute kitty as you probably expect, but the name of a shin-kicking contest --- one of the events in the Cotswold Olimpick Games. (the referee is a "stickler")
   I wonder what's up with these nutter Brits? What with Yorkshire ferret-legging (tie your pants cuffs closed and stick a ferret down there -- underwear not allowed. "It's not so bad if you don't mind a ferret biting your tool." said one contestant) And now "purring" it seems that the English miss larking about kicking the hell out of third-world countries.      And so it goes.  DJA  








 

Camino de Santiago, part IV

"Go west, young man!" I'm not young and dw isn't a man but we continued west anyway.  We didn't walk the final three miles into Burgos, rather we caught a city bus in Villafria. The day was hot, dw was tired and foot-sore, and the description of the last bit of trail sounded unappealing. Since we would be taking a bus from Burgos to Leon the little bit into the city didn't matter. It's unlikely we would have been affected but later we heard one woman say some creep grabbed her boobs on that bit of trail, and several others said they really felt unsafe. I have no idea why that bit was so bad. It's the only part of the Camino where anyone reported anything similar. I imagine, at least for awhile, the pleasure in the walk was ruined for those women.

Burgos is a World Heritage City. The medieval old town is well preserved and the cathedral is a giant pile festooned with gargoyles, extra side altars, stairs and doors leading to a blank wall, cloisters stretching every which way, a giant silver "float" carried in religious parades -- pretty much every adornment you can imagine. El Cid and his wife are buried there. The marker on the floor is blocked off so no one can dance on his grave even if they want to. The marker is nondescript, I almost missed it on our first pass through the church. However the city makes up for that with it's statue. Perhaps the beard doesn't make the man, but it doesn't hurt. In the evening I half expected to see Charlton Heston's ghost lurking around, carrying an Uzi and looking noble. Then I realized he doubtless fancied himself as Moses, leading the ignorant and unwashed, so he wouldn't be hanging around Burgos.
     There's not much left of the original fortress, apparently the last bunch who conquered it also leveled it. About the only thing left is the foundation which still looks difficult to storm if you're only armed with a pike. In general, we enjoyed our afternoon and evening wandering around the city.

After just one night, we caught a bus to Leon. Riding the bus, the Meseta (the part we skipped) looked hot and shade free  -- apparently many peregrinos thought so because the bus was half full when we started and as we progressed more and more got on the bus until it was full when we got to Leon.
     Leon is another World Heritage City. It was originally a Roman Legion encampment (29 BC), hence the name. It is another city we enjoyed just wandering around looking at the buildings and assorted curiosities.  The cathedral is another wonder -- It's second only to Chartres for the size and splendor of it's stained-glass windows. It's also notable because it took 50 years to build, it started to collapse and it took another 50 years to re-engineer so it wouldn't collapse. There's a Gaudi building, modest and tame for him, a lovely river walk, bits of Roman walls and gates  --  in brief, another city where we agreed it would be worth spending a few days.

Two days later (including one 20 mile day) we made it to Astorga which is the best small (12,000) town on the camino. It is a tourist destination for locals as well as peregrinos. A small museum has 12  "floats"  carried by 24 or 32 men (a long pole on their shoulders) each with a religious theme (the crucifixion,  Madonna col Bambino, Mary on a Joseph-led donkey, etc.) several crosses for individuals to carry, long masts with flags and crosses -- all things to be carried in religious parades. Next to the museum is the remains of a roman house with a large floor mosaic still in situ. In other places are bits of the original roman walls and gates. There's a small plain 11th century church, now used as an art gallery.  The main cathedral is built with random colors of stone -- mostly tan, with a red steeple and bits of red and black stone spread around -- it's as if when building it the workmen would run out of tan, and then grab whatever was handy and stick it in, it's very odd.

     And the reason we rushed to get here and then spent an evening and morning looking around: the Gaudi designed Bishops Palace. Like most of Gaudi, it's a neo-gothic design replete with unusual details: oddly shaped arches, a pillar directly in front of a window, rain down-spouts that are just groves in a corner. The bishop was a friend of Gaudi's and to his credit he lived in it for only a few months (he thought it was too grand -- he was right) Now it's used as an art museum and the contents, for such a small town, are superb and sometimes unexplainable -- but the building itself is the real attraction.
     After dinner and after wandering around looking at the sights during our evening of arrival, we watched a Korean drum corps, led by a shaman (?) as they performed in the main plaza. A totally unexpected pleasure. They were good, they were fun, and they got us pumped for the last stretch.

WORD OF THE DAY:  "rechauffe"   of food -- reheated, made from leftovers. I always cook for two days: I plan for rechauffe food, that's because I'm not really interested in cooking on a daily basis.  Usually it's OK, but sometimes two days are a day-and-a-half too much.

BOOK OF THE DAY: Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Thomas Piketty) I admit it was tough sledding at times and I didn't actually read every word, but I read enough to get what he was saying: Concentration of wealth, such as we have now, is bad for the economy and bad for society. And "trickle-down economy" is a joke (As Will Rogers said: "Water trickles down. Gold stays in the first pocket it comes to.") Unfortunately the people who should read this book won't -- or if they do, they won't care. 

JOKE OF THE DAY: Little Willie quatrains were very popular around 1900; they had many authors.

Willie pushed his Aunt Elizer
Off a rock into a geyser.
Now he's feeling quite dejected,
Didn't get the rise expected.

Little Willie hung his sister,
She was dead before we missed her.
Little Willies always up to tricks,
Ain't he cute, he's only six.

Little Willie in one of his bright new sashes,
Fell in the grate and was burnt to ashes.
And now although the room grows chilly,
We haven't the heart to poke up Willie.    

And so it goes DJA




 

Camino de Santiago, part III

              So on we walked, and waited for a cool breeze
              And went without shade, and cursed the sun ---
--- So it doesn't quite scan --- But as we progressed, the afternoons were getting quite hot and dw in particular was bothered by the heat and increasingly by sore feet (not blisters particularly, but by some odd inflammation of her least toes) --- (dw: My "little toes". All of my toes are significant and while I have "little toes", I don't have "least toes".)

In any case, we walked on and at Los Arcos we learned a new (to us) art term: "horror vacui", in particular as it applied to the church interior. (literally: fear of empty space. In art, you can't put in too much detail)  Every, and I mean every, square inch of the interior was carved, painted or gilded and usually all three at once. It was amazing. We sat through the mass and at the start all of the lights were turned on: When the lights hit the gilded, giant retablo it was like being assaulted, suddenly the giant (30' X 50') polished wall, adorned with carvings, statues, paintings, pillars, angels, and saints shone with the supposed glory of heaven -- which was the intent of course. It was amazing. After the mass all of the peregrinos attending (about 30) got a special blessing and then got to go backstage into the vestry. -- One of the few times we really regretted not understanding Spanish. -- The priest showed us and explained some paintings of good quality, and then behind giant double doors (6"X15'X10') -- the door locked with a 12 inch forged iron key -- he showed us relics of Mexico, Peru, Ecuador and of the Spanish Reconquista.  dw and I could understand enough to pick up names and dates but unfortunately that was all.  (mea culpa, we should have studied harder)

     Probably because Los Arcos gets few tourists apart from peregrinos, much of the church was open and we were able to enter the choir loft, sit in the ornately carved stalls, and get a close look at the psalters (they were protected with a glass cover). Because everything was so accessible, this church was as interesting as the larger cathedrals in such places as Pamplona or Burgos.

There were more vineyards at the western end of the walk, but in the middle section, wheat and sunflowers seemed to dominate. The sunflowers north of the path would seem to follow us -- it was amusing, and we (along with many others) brushed off part of the flowers to write our initials on the plants.

The wheat fields though were amazing. The wheat was already harvested, but the straw was baled and piled into giant stacks. The stacks were 40 or more feet high, 50 feet wide and a hundred feet long.  Great piles. (later I found the straw would be used for paper or bio-fuel or a few other things) We were puzzled by these stacks (and I wondered if there was a risk of spontaneous combustion, or arson -- we didn't see any signs of either one) It wasn't clear why the straw was piled instead of being left as bales spread around the field, but the heaps were useful to get behind for a quick whizz.

Still in the wine country, we did stop at the Monasterio Irache, just outside of Estella --- site of the famous wine fountain. And indeed, you can fill up whatever you want for free (people do seem to be somewhat restrained -- There wasn't any sign of 5 gallon carboys) Unfortunately we were there too early, the inside keg was nearly empty, and we just got a half-cup to share. Since it was just at dawn and we had another fifteen miles to walk it was a bit early to knock back a couple pints of red wine but it would have been nice to fill up one of our water bottles.
     As an aside, we thought the Spanish red wine (rioja) -- the vin ordinaire of this region --- was consistently very good and amazingly inexpensive.

 (the jackass in the black hat seemed to think he was being helpful)

Increasingly, dw was bothered by the heat and by her feet. For a few days, I stuffed as much of her load into my pack as I could. But it wasn't enough. Then we tried a carrying service (for a few dollars you can have a service pick up your pack, and deliver it to where you plan on stopping at the end of the day -- there are several companies that do it, including the postal service) I continued carrying my pack, but I did put some of my things into dw's pack.  Ultimately, we took a bus from Burgos to Leon, skipping the Meseta -- the hottest part of the walk. We weren't alone: the bus was half full, mostly with peregrinos when we started, and along the way more got on at each stop. By the time we arrived in Leon, the bus was full.
     Since I felt good I considered walking the Meseta section, but in the end that would have been cutting it too close for our departure date, and I wanted to spend some time in Santiago and Madrid which wouldn't have been possible had I walked. As it was, the time we had in those cities was less than we wanted.

Burgos is the end of Roland territory. The modest hill where he fought Ferragut is noted, surrounded by shabby farm stuff, and planted with a pole on top but there are no more carvings of his great unbreakable sword Durandal. Around Belorado poor Roland is put on his horse Veillantif and told to blow his horn Oliphant (loud enough to wake the dead) elsewhere because starting at Burgos El Cid is the hero of the day. 

POEM OF THE DAY: (Amanda McKittrick Ros) -- the author of what some consider the worse poetry ever written ---
ON VISITING WESTMINISTER ABBEY
Holy Moses! Take a look!
Flesh decayed in every nook.
Some rare bits of brain lie here.
Mortal loads of beef and beer.

HISTORICAL DATUM: In 1983 sacrilegious thieves stole Jesus' foreskin relic from the rectory in Calcata, Italy.   The case remains unsolved. 

WORD OF THE DAY: mallemaroking -- boisterous and drunken partying among sailors in extreme Northern waters. I would suggest anyone living in Sweden should be careful around mallemaroking sailors.                     And so it goes. DJA