The Cathedral

Day 20 Santiago de Compostela

We woke up to grey skies and rain. I'm so glad we aren't hiking today! Dina made us another amazing breakfast and by the time we were ready to head up to the cathedral the rain had almost stopped. The cathedral was incredible! It's hard to imagine how it was made so many centuries ago. Inside it was easier to see that the building is shaped like a cross and every section was filled with some ornate feature. It's too bad I ran out of room on my camera but I know that Dina and Michael took pictures today so I'm not too worried. We could easily have spent more time inside but the crowds were ridiculous! There were people everywhere and it was hard to move. I'm glad I got to see in the cathedral but again I was reminded of how rich the church was compared to how much less the people of that time had to live with. The architecture is amazing but the contrast of how fancy the cathedral was to to the simple the buildings we had seen in the surrounding country kind of ruined it for me. Realistically I know that the same happens today, I guess it's just easier to see when you are looking back at something that has already happened. After the cathedral it was sunny and we had no agenda. We walked around and discovered a free art exhibit that had some really cool pictures of the area. Next we went to the museum of the Galician People (Galicia is the area we have been hiking in). It was awesome and explained some of the buildings we have seen while hiking. I'm sure I would have learned a lot more if I could read and understand Spanish or Galician (they have their own dialect here) but they did a really good job portraying the life and history in the exhibits that it was fairly easy to get the just of it. The museum was in the old convent of Santo Domingo de Bonaval which was build in the early 1200's. The staircase was really cool and wasn't one staircase but three that started at the bottom and swirled around a turret as it went up. It also had a giant cathedral that was empty! No one was inside only us and it was like they were just letting it decay. There was even a bird flying around inside. Unfortunately we got kicked out because it was siesta time and the museum closed for the afternoon but again I could have spent a little longer inside. We went back to our apartment and relaxed during siesta and waited for the restaurants to open again before heading back to the same place we had eaten yesterday because the food there is so amazing! We weren't disappointed tonight either.  We had a quiet night back at the apartment each of us thinking about tomorrow's travel plans. Good night world!