宇宁: Santiago De Compostela

Santiago de Compostela

The cathedral from the Catehedral square

Decide to visit Santiago with Cristina this weekend. Had a great time as the city is full of friendly and generous people.
It is an interesting city that started with tomb of St James. This leads to building a cathedral and finally a city based on devotion.

The Cathedral from Alemada park: This picture says it all.. the cathedral that started a city

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Compostela

As St James is the saint for Spain and his tomb is in the catherdral, every year people walk to his grave, in a path call "the Way of St James" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James,_son_of_Zebedee
All over the city, you see souvenirs and pictures of pilgrimage.

City sourvenirs

For me, it is interesting to see the majestic cathedral and marvel at the workmanship.

Cathedral from the front view

Side entrance of the Cathedral

One of the small chapel in the cathedral

Visiting the cathedral museum but unfortunately a lot of the writing is in Spanish. On hindsight, it would be better if we had booked a guided tour in English to understand the cathedral better. Next time =)

The cathedral towers from the museum

Some of the treasures in the Cathedral museum

The cathedral, the hospital (Paradore) and the city hall surrounds the square and starts the old town in the city.

Plaza de Obradoiro - showing the city hall and the Paradore

The square from another view

The original columns in Colexiata de Sar, many of them leaning

The courtyard in that old church showing the columns

Small festival, and caught a picture of people with the 2 lady statue in Alemada park

Galicia is well known for its food. Travelling around Europe, it's not uncommon to see high end restaurants touting Galician seafood or beef. Of course, i'm on my usual quest for gastronomic experience
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galicia_(Spain)

First stop is the Paradores in Santiago.The Paradores are a part of Spanish government way of preserving old historical buildings, converting them to hotels and restaurants. http://www.paradores-spain.com/
A lot of my Spanish friends have told me to visit the Paradores if it's available in a city as they frequently have interesting buildings and good food

The Paradores in Santiago is an old hospital converted to a hotel, known as Hostal de Reis Catolicos
http://www.parador.es/en/paradores/parador-de-santiago-de-compostela

Paradores of Santiago interior

We had a vermouth at one of the 2 restaurants in the hotel and got a free seafood soup with our vermouth (apparently this city give a free tapa for every drink!)

One of the 2 restuarant : Meson Enxebre

We then had the tasting menu at Dos Reis which has a stunning dining room

Stunning dining room in Dos Reis

Tasting menu at Dos Reis

For dinner, we had it at Abastos 2.0 which is a restaurant next to the market. Interesting place, with communal table and great seafood. The pulpo is probably one of the best i had in my Spain trip, incredibly soft and yet crunchy on the outside. The cannoli for dessert is also easily one of the best i had. The perfect amount of cream to wafer, crunchy wafer and cream at the right consistency. Yum!

Dinner at Abastos 2.0

The hotel that i stayed this time was an interesting one. It is almost like a Paradores, minus the price tag. It's an old convent that's been converted to an AC hotel .

AC hotel Palacio. It's built on an old convent and very well preserved

My welcome snacks and breakfast at the hotel. Funny amount of pub nuts!

The interesting part about Galicia is it's so rainy that it's a city prepared for rain. Terraces are covered even though I haven't found a use for Spanish terrace =) It's been a topic of discussion between Bill and me, as they are too small to do anything practical except to house a plant or two.

Typical Galician granite house with white covered terrace

I cannot resist taking a picture of this. Cristina told me that gallegos (they are people from Galicia) are well known to answer a question with another question.