Santiago day 5

Today we finally caught up with Katharina our German friend from Berlin. She only arrived on Saturday. She said she felt she wanted to delay her arrival in Santiago because she felt sad it was ending.  She  leaves on Monday for Bilbao where she had flown into Spain. She wants to adopt a Spanish dog to take home and needs to give herself time to find a dog. It must be love at first sight for both of them, she says. I asked why a Spanosh dog and she said because it is a poor country and the dogs may not get many opportunities for being adopted. She has a kind heart and has helped some of the young ones along the way.

Lunch at Altulla

We all go to lunch at our favourite whole in the wall, down an alley, Galician restaurant that serves both vegetarian and general menus. The owner is pleased to see us back again. It is really busy today with  lots of locals having Sunday lunch.There is this continual drumming and Peter gets up to investigate as it goes past the end of the alley. It is a whole group of young people with all sorts of drums moving through the city.  it sounds phenomenal and reverberates off the walls along the street.

Katharina is looking for a bed as the Albergue she stayed at was run by this very strange lady who accused her of staying two nights and not paying. She had only just arrived and the woman was demanding money for the previous night. This is most odd and very unusual behaviour for an hospitalaria. She packed her bag and left early this morning. We invite her to stay at our place and she can have my bed. I will sleep on the couch and let her out early in the morning to she can get her bus.

Peter and I have a tour of the cathedral which includes the museum and the roof. The museum was really interesting and much more than we expected. The tour of the roof was also fantastic and we both decided it was really worth it. We learnt so much more than we expected. 

These figures only come out on St James Day. They are huge and represent all the races of the world.

The roof of the Cathedral

Back home we sit in the garden until the others come home. I felt odd going through our neighbours service area to get to the pretty garden. It has artificial lawn but flowers and a tree so it looks very neat. I don't think it would get much full sun at any time but is probably a cool spot in high summer. A lot of these places seem to have a dampish smell because the sun never penetrates very far into the houses.

We have seen a poster for a concert which is a tribute to John Lennon that is being held in an audtorium at the university.  It is not far from our flat so we  set off in search of it. The map ileads us in a wide circle but we eventually find it next to a park that has swans, geese, assorted ducks and a Muscovy duck that wags it's tale as we talk to it. It is very funny. The concert is in aid of Medicin sans Frontiere and is another reason we are attending as Karen and Andy have walked to raise money for the group too. It is a very funny concert with some excellent acts and some average acts but not a lot of music that was actually John Lennon's. In fact he seemed to have little to do with it at all. It went for three hours and they had a raffle as well. It was an interesting night anyway. The audience sang along at various times in both English and Spanish. We didn't get to bed till midnight and Katharina needs to be up at 4:45 to get her bus. She will have to sleep on the bus!