Petiscos and pink tiles of Porto

Once there was a campground in the heart of Porto -- or so said our map. So we traipsed to the heart in our trusty little camping car, over cobbles and medieval alleyways and through chaotic traffic only to be advised by a bunch of ancient men pondering the state of Porto affairs as they stood on that street corner, that the missing campground was no more: it was ‘Finito!’

Little old men on street corners and in tabacs and bars know everything in Europe.

After detailed instructions through Pete’s window in rapid Portuguese (who needs to learn the language?) and with much gesticulation and directional signing, we were waved off by the little old men and were, without further hazard, quickly onto wider roads, paved roads, though still they were roads rabid with reckless drivers, all headed a few kilometres down the road to the Praia (beach) where we easily found ourselves a spot for the night – and a bus stop for the morning.

As in Naples, driving in Porto is a tiny piece of insanity. Even on a bus.

The city bus drivers, the next morning, took long, wide, city-sized buses into tight, angled, narrow, dark, medieval lanes, through which they tore at terrifying speed, accompanied by loud horn warnings at blind spots --and more than once shaved their side view mirrors on stone buildings and walls, so close were they driving. Long slashing bruises and varied concreted patches on many of the stone walls and sharp corners show that not all the buses make it through unscathed.

When you sit on the Gaia side and look across the Douro River at Porto snaking her perilous way to the top of each of the surrounding hills along sharp terraces, it’s like looking at Venice from one side of the Grand Canal. Magical.

But when you spend days winding up and down her traverses and her barrios, Porto is much like a very old, very tired, madam who has lived long and hard, and perhaps too well at times. A madam old enough, now, to not even be mildly embarrassed about showing off her ragged petticoats just as readily as she tiredly flounces her pretty ones.

The wealth from Porto’s control of the spice route from India to Europe after Vasco da Gama’s expedition, along with her possession of Brazil, and the income generated after gold was discovered there – is evident in Porto's once-magnificent churches and public squares. The gold paint used in these churches must deplete the supply.

Most of the churches were built when times were good, but many, today, are ripe for maintenance before they become too terribly tattered.

One of these is the exquisite Igreja de Carmo in a very picturesque praça in Porto. This was the home of monks, built for them in the 1700s, with the gorgeous external wall of azulejos tiles added in the early 1900s. Attached, but separated by an extraordinarily narrow metre wide dwelling, is a second church: the Igreja dos Carmelitas, built for the Carmelite nuns with its gilded interior. The tiny home separating the two churches was occupied until the 20th century. Ensuring that the nuns and monks were kept separate or so says the charming tale. 

Long spells of political instability and dictatorship have left much housing and infrastructure as basic. Renovated terraced apartments, sit side by side with structurally wrecked ones. Ancient shops that were outfitted once upon a century ago still operate now as then, next door to modern sharp-edged glass and glossily-tiled bars.

The same irreconcilable contrasts unhappily coexist we observed further north in Portugal.

In whole sections of windowless, decaying suburbs in the historic heart of Porto pigeons and graffiti and the smell of sewage seeping up from ancient drains are more common than structurally sound walls or healthy living spaces.

But still Porto tugs at your heartstrings. Which may explain why its centre has been declared a World Heritage site.

The atrium in the railway station is covered with brilliant bucolic scenes of the Douro countryside at harvest time-- in blue azulejos tiles. Tho’ these have been covered with some ghastly black mesh which imprisons them, distorts them, and while it was probably meant to protect them from pigeon poop, and antique tile thieves, it doesn’t. The mesh hangs, as an invitation to hoodlums, in ribbon and tatters, and barely does a job at all, except to mar.

Then, along the Douro River, there is a tiny memorial to the Porto citizens who died in March in 1809 when a frail pontoon bridge that once stood here, signed only for minimal traversing weights, collapsed as panicked city dwellers rushed to escape after hearing that Napolean’s army was entering Porto. 

The bridge, even then, was barely a bridge. It was mere planks and makeshift pieces placed from one boat to the next, building a temporary walkway, allowing the few who usually needed it a way to cross the river,

But not an entire city. Never many people at once. It was never meant to withstand that.

So when the city folk, in mass hysteria, used this fragile structure to run from invaders, it collapsed like flimsy cardboard, and some four thousand poor souls drowned in minutes.

Some of these bridge boats were, no doubt, the glorious Barcos Rabello boats which, today, look like a variation on Venice’s romantic gondolas, but more substantial: longer, fatter, sturdier -- because their task was substantial: to transport cask upon cask of port wine down from the Quintas where grapes were grown on terraces above the Duoro to the wharehouses and lodges in Vila Nova de Gaia (where we were sent by the old men to camp). So beautiful are these boats. Many are lined up on the Gaia side of the river being tarted up with shiny varnish, fresh sails, new paintwork, rubs, scrubs and polishes: as next week the city and all her treasures are being dressed up for the Festival of St Joao (St John the Baptist).

This is the biggest festival of the calendar year in northern Portugal and starts on the 23rd and finishes on the 24th June (Becky’s birthday). People all over Portugal barely sleep during this festival. Instead they traipse around from venue to venue hitting each other over the head (for good luck!) with the full flowers of long-stemmed garlic plants.

These big headed flowers are being sold in giant stalks in the market this week.

Though these are modern times, and garlic flowers leave a residual smell not always palatable to the recipient, so modern day proponents of the head-banging more often than not use plastic hammers instead of the garlic flowers. Thousands of plastic hammers, which squeak when you bash someone over the head, are being sold on streets corners and in hawker bazaars ready for this festival.

A tragedy, I say. They should stick with the garlic flowers. I bashed Miss Bec over the head with one giant stalk (which looks like an agapanthus stem, but with a tinier, tighter flower) in the market yesterday well in advance of her birthday. An early present from me.

High up in the suburb of Se in the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament in the Cathedral there is an 18th century silver retable that is so dazzling and so beautiful an example of local silversmith work that a clever sacristan of the cathedral, terrified that Napolean’s invading army would make off with this city treasure, had the forethought to paint it with thick coarse gesso to mask its perfection from the evil invaders. His strategy worked. It remains there today.

Tripeiros. Tripe-eaters--Porto’s inhabitants, historically and fondly, have been called this. Because when they sent their sailors out in caravels to explore the unknown world down the west coast of Africa in the early 1500s they gave them all the meat they possessed as provisions -- and kept only the tripe for themselves.

Tripe is still a typical meal in Portugal today. We have seen it on many menus, and, yesterday, in the market we saw it made into long strings of tripe sausages. Which we chose not to taste as we had had it as children and it was not a taste we loved.  

I ate the ubiquitous salt cod instead. Salt cod is famous all along the Atlantic coast, actually, but this was a typical local dish: Bolinhos de Bacalhau: one of Porto’s most famous dishes. Which is flaked salt cod, mashed with potato, onion and parsley, freshly spooned into hot oil in perfect quenelles so each bollinhos is rolled and tossed until it is golden and gently crisped, then served with rice, more potatoes, and salad. I am salivating just remembering the flavour. All for the price of €3.50 (about $A5.50).

Startlingly cheap and scrumptious. 

Delicious, even when served as a petisco, similar to what their French neighbours offer as an aperitif, or the Spanish offer as tapas. A serving of petiscos (pe-tsheesh-co) is a smaller serving of a typical Portuguese meal, and you pay for it. As you do with tapas, which, can be free if it is just a bite like pinxtos ( a small breaded bite or toothpick nibble at a bar) though not free these days in more touristed areas.  Originally petisco was just a chunk of bread to cover a drink on a hot summer evening, used to keep the insects from buzzing over the drink.  But, over time, that has evolved to adding something  on top of the bread to eat with the drink -- such an addictive habit now.  

As with the Basques the Portuguese rarely, if ever, offer salt and pepper condiments. Probably because they believe that the meal is cooked ‘to the point’ – perfectly—and needs nothing added. So we learned quickly not to ask for pepper. Salt was never a problem.

We accidentally lost our Porto images, so these are borrowed. Even so, Porto's beautiful old bones remain in need of some lovingly fashioned clothes but please do not destroy the tiles.  Tile decor was introduced into Portugal by Manual 1 after visiting Seville and falling in love with the moorish tiles being made there, thanks to the Arab influences along the Spanish coast.  Even when scarred these tile remnants remain  beautiful.  

Decorative art nouveau architecture in Liberdade Square, Porto

Beautiful azulejos tiles added to the Igreja do Carmo are a tourist magnet

Shabby but exquisite

Heavily gilded church interior, Porto

We ate bolinhos de bacalhau, salted cod fritters, for lunch in the seafood market in Porto

Barcos Rabello boats, port wine barges on the Duoro River, Porto

Dom  Luis Bridge joining Porto to Vila Nova de Gaia

Graffiti is everywhere. almost picturesque

Atmospheric wine bar and coffee shop in Porto

Local petiscos in a Porto bar

Pink tiles are so prevalent

Colourful renovated cluster of leaning dwellings and shops

The glorious blue tiles are ubiquitous in Porto

The walkways down to the Duoro are medieval narrow and darkened

Port wine in casks to be loaded onto the barques

In memory of the thousands who drowned in the bridge collapse during the Napolean invasion 

Love the tiles!  They are everywhere as we walk

Egrejas decked with Azulejos

Portugal is even scruffier than Spain: all N roads (national routes, typically) are so full of pot-holes that, any day now, I expect to hear a loud blow-out tyre rupture. The road shoulders are paved somewhat raggedly, the verges thick with healthy weeds that don’t even look edible; and collecting discarded rubbish is not a priority along Portuguese roadsides.

Still there is an enormous amount of road-work and apartment-building (as in Spain) going on, so there is money about and being spent. It is in the finishing off -- the final touches: the edges, the verges, the completion of these jobs -- where very little attention to detail is ever paid.

Yet, rising up in the middle of most of these shabby grey little villages are these astonishing churches (called ‘egreja’ here) with heavily decorated facades – all high spires and glorious azulejo (a-zoo-lay’-zhoo) tiles. Irresistible.

My taste is minimalist, and azulejo tiles are anything but minimalist in their concept or design. But paste a wall of these densely-patterned heavily-decorative tiles against the clean simple grey lines of an old rectangular set of stone doors or window frames and you have a style of minimalist elegance which we don’t often get to see at home.

I had to come to Portugal to even comprehend it.

So the world could be litter and lax, but if there were walls of azulejo tiles within cooee -- I would be completely charmed.

And church interiors are even more outrageous in Portugal than in Spain. Wood, for altars that are built high to the vaulted ceilings even around interior alcoves, has been curled, carved, and densely coloured in thick layers of gold paint.

Heaven surely figures as gold in Portugal thinking.

Outside these egrejas, and down shabby roads, peasant potato farmers and yuppy apartment dwellers appear to live in such close proximity along the coast of Portugal that it is difficult to conceive how either is completely happy with the other being there -- so completely different is their focus, their taste, and their purpose for being there.

The hodge-podge of ancient, worn, stone, sprawling, untidy-almost-to-derelict farm buildings contrasts with the hard-edged modern, white-painted, ticky-tacky, box-like apartments in the next lot – virtually none of it blends.

One has to assume, though, that some of these potato farmers are poor no more: that they have been tempted by gold dust: seduced into selling off their little patches of land to high-bidding apartment developers.

Sad, it is – as much of the new is generic and will not age well, while most of the old is crumbling and so near to ruin it may never be retrievable.

We spent so much time exploring in so much detail the harbour and the historic centre of Viana do Castelo that we ended up having to camp there the night.

The Celts built a settlement there (called a ‘citania’) -- on the little hill of Monte de Santa Luzia which overlooks what is now considered the old and the new town. Where the Celts lived now sits a rather gorgeous little stone basilica, high up, that looks for all the world like Sacre Coeur in Paris. So similar.

And down in the cobbled back streets of the little harbour town of Viana do Castelo there is a colourful calle (street) named for Vasco da Gama--and many buildings and squares throughout this little town sport similar seafaring symbols of sculpture and motif that herald its seafaring history. Da Gama became a great hero in his home country of Portugal, for establishing a route to the exotic spices along the coast of India, despite the horror and brutality of his treatment of many of the locals. 

Miss Bec spent time cavorting with enticing blue, green and yellow stone men in one of the squares in town. 

Even today the simple working-mans' harbour is alive and thriving. We were welcomed into a jovial fisherman’s boat shed to watch as he set about repairing nets for his next big jaunt. We were taught how to rope floats on to his new triple layered fishing net, how to bind these in, to knot, then twist them securely. Further along the dock little old ladies, out of little old dockside sea shanties, where the walls smell of centuries of brine and seafood stain, were selling the excess of last night’s sea haul: off with their fishy heads and scales, a swift swipe into a bucket for one last seawater splash, then a slash or two with a knife down the middle, and voila!– sea-fresh fillets wrapped in newspaper--dinner!

Igreja Santa Luzia, Viana do Castelo, Portugal

Beautiful architecture in religious complex near Vila Nova de Cerveira

Ornate cemetery near Vila Nova de Cerveira

Casa da Praça in the center of Viana do Castelo

Praça da República, Viana do Castelo

The street signs are charming

Fisherman repairing nets in Viana do Castelo

Azulejo tiles on stark grey walls in Viana do Castelo

Characterful chapel in Viana do Castelo

Ajulejos work in Igreja da Misericorida

Gold in Igreja da misericordia, Viana do Castelo

Sun through stained glass in Portugal

Ladies selling craft out of windows to make ends meet

The days catch was sold off from where the boat docked

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In the footsteps of Pilgrims

After Bilbao we left the unique white and red houses (ox blood was once use to create this red colour) of the Basque country behind, and headed into the soft pink tiled roofs of Cantabria to a little village on the water called Santoña--famous in this part of the world for its anchovies and bonito. This is a quiet picturesque little working village with a resort-class waterfront. If more tourists knew of it they would flock here for the sun, sea and watersports. Or maybe they do and they are just not here today as it also sports an expensive fleet of large fishing vessels roped to both its modern and ancient docks and for a tiny place it turned out to be unexpectedly interesting.

We found, quite by surprise, on this slow lazy Spanish Sunday, a Bullring  at the end of this astonishing waterfront, which was open and viewable, thanks to El Presidente of the Bullring (we think this is what he said) who just happened to be at one of the gates with his mate as we moseyed on around, and who turned out willing to allow a small bunch of ragged-looking Aussies in to view his beloved and beautifully-maintained village bullring. 

It was a small fully functional bullring, with seats of cold grey concrete, like a tiny gladiator amphitheater, overlooking a protective circular ring fenced in blood-red painted wood. Any activity in the bullring would be visible from every vantage point. No seat would offer any protection, though. The corrida finished here for the season last September--we think they said. They told us, too, (in no language that we know, but which we somehow thought we understood) of a stupid drunken Australian who was gored last season at Pamploma in the bull run there. They crossed themselves hoping that that wouldn’t happen here in Santoña--and: the devil take idiotic drunken self-destructive Aussies, they then intoned.  We think.  

El Presidente also happened to be the proprietor of one of those oft-read-about regional restaurants (albeit fast disappearing in this global world we live in) that Spanish city dwellers hunt down on Sundays because of their charm--down by the dock of the bay. This happened to be a genuine family-run restaurant where papa and his sons did all the chatting and the char-broiling of the meat and fish courses over hot coals out in dramatic full view of all passing spectators, on a metal gridded barbecue on the footpath in front of their restaurant--while mama and the girls did what needs to be done indoors in preparation for a hoard of folk coming to lunch. The charring aroma was an invitation in itself, without needing the charm and effusive welcome of the menfolk.    

The coals were on smoking, more anchovies, sardines and other delicious-looking fish and meats to be broiled for lunch were arriving in open ice crates as we left. They were two hours away, still, from even the start of lunch, and we tried, but failed, to hold off that long to eat. It would have been a fine fine feast.  Estupendo, in truth.  

On to Santillana del Mer, continuing our Spanish pilgrim jaunt. The very first monastery in this village was founded in the eighth century and dedicated to Saint Juliana and over the centuries this has been bastardised to San-tee-yan-a: hence the current name. Modern day pilgrims to Santiago de Compostella, passing through here on this lesser used coastal route that we are following, were plodding into the village wet and exhausted this afternoon, seeking their free hostel room for the night.

If Spain ever goes through a process of identifying its most beautiful villages the way France has done Santillana del Mer may well top its list. The village is architecturally gorgeous. Once home to a group of wealthy medieval noblemen who built their own collegiate church, convent and palaces with torres, Santillana del Mer must, then, have been living and wonderful. Now it is one of those partially dead but still very special, ancient cobbled villages that are such draw cards for tourists. Though a walk in the back streets where few tourist bother to venture shows that much structural stabilisation and urgent building repair needs to be done to many of the remaining structures to make them even minimally secure.

Santillana del Mer is just a couple of kilometres from the famous Altamira caves and the world famous rock drawings considered among the finest paleolithic art in the world--but because of the unavoidable degradation of the site only a replica of these ancient art masterpieces can be viewed in a museum there. Albeit a huge one.

Since first striking the Pyrenees just before Lourdes we have been in mountains. Today we have been driving through the Asturia region. To those who imagine Spain as flat, dry plains with little variation in scenery should trip over to the north west principados.

With the Pico de Europas towering rather darkly over us all today the scenery is more like the high Swiss Alps than any plains in Spain. The Picos are hard. They must have formed with a brutal big bang. They jag up sharply out of the earth showing raw elemental razor teeth. Nothing at all about them is comforting. Yet they are awesomely beautiful despite that.

Tonight we are camping by a beach (with dinosaur footprints bare and uncovered and completely unprotected on the rocks nearby) on one of those rare tiny patches of relatively flat space along the Coast Verte. This is called the Costa Verte because, of course, it is green. It is green because it rains virtually non-stop is my guess. We, as ever, have been lucky as the rain in Spain rains mainly in the night. So our days to date have (cross fingers, toes, eyes!) been almost idyllic. We have found a campsite that is so essentially Spanish that I am attempting to get Peter to wander around and photograph what makes it so.

The Spanish appear to holiday in caravans, as a rule: not camping cars, as ours is called. They have full annexes attached to their goodly-sized caravans stretched to screaming point. These are their dining rooms. Inside these are fully laid well-swept floor coverings, big dining room tables and full set of chairs -- and vases (many vases) of flowers on surrounding oddments of camping furniture paraphernalia throughout. One lady next door to us was bleaching her already immaculately white dining chairs today. On holiday.

As they seem to always eat out in bars and surrounding restaurants I am not quite sure what these massive living spaces are for. They then have elaborate tables and chairs set out in the open air beyond this, then beyond that, their gardens: potted plants from home corralling their territory. But there is more! Beyond their caravans, their annexes, their outdoor settings but tucked in behind the garden boundary they also set up an entirely separate canvas structure--the kitchen: completely outfitted with the prep unit and the kitchen sink. I have yet to see one of these being used as there is no real need for a snazzy kitchen when you  eat out. Most Spanish apartments (which is what people here in the north west mainly live in, and they are nearly as high density here as in Hong Kong dwellings, at that!) are not as big as some of these camping set ups.  It is all so fascinating.

Today, for a change, the rain dumped on us so heavily that we changed plans twice. We left Gijon in softly falling rain to explore the city of Oveida, only to find it raining even harder in Oveida, so back we shot to the coast, found an amazing campground overlooking the entire bay at Gijon, parked ourselves for part of the afternoon and played cards. Dad lost to Miss Bec, again! Then, as the rain stopped as it always seems to do for us, we walked the forty minutes to town, then back again. A totally brilliant passegiata along with almost the entire population of Gijon along the Passeo Littoral del Santa Lorenzo admiring all the abstract waterfront sculptures enroute. Along the waterfront we took a shot of the iconic Mother of the Immigrants sculpture, as she watches her children sailing away to make a better.  Her face wrenchingly anguished.  

Tonight we have an entire expanse of city lights out our high bedroom window along, with the soothing sound of crashing wave--and just out to sea there may even be a shadowy silhouette of one of those legendary pirate ships that once controlled these waters, dipping its tallow-oil light as it slips stealthily passed our bay.

We loved this place so much we stayed longer. We walked the old and the new city, ate one of the amazingly good value formula lunches (Four courses: avocado salad with a delicious dressing, followed by a potato and lamb stew. Peter does something very similar in the pressure cooker. This one, tho’, had lots of bay leaf flavour.  then a fish and vegetable course, followed by postre which is a dessert, if you can handle it: which we couldn’t!) – as well as a side order of bread and wine, for 10€ each. (That’s 4 courses, plus bread and wine for less than $A17.00 each.)  

The Spanish, like Australians, are not, as a general rule, thin. Tho’ they walk a lot, probably more than the average Aussie. In fact, many people walk morning, noon and night, right up until dark, which is currently about 10pm. And so many people eat lunch and dinner out that I often wonder who is actually in the shops when they do open. Here stores close about 1.30pm (depending on the shop) and open between 5pm and around 9 pm. Trade during opening hours is very sporadic in most stores–so much so we wonder how many of them survive.

Today we have driven some 300 kms on roads that are not roads as Aussies know them. They are like extensive bridges built between the tops of mountains. If the road can’t be built through the mountain, in a tunnel (one tunnel we traversed today was 1,500 metres long) then they build what looks like a viaduct, connecting mountain top to mountain top, oftentimes 500 metres above the valleys below. Where these viaduct spans became too immense to be held up by the normal pilons, large arches were especially built to carry their weight. 

There is little obvious transition from high to low while driving on these main motorways. As our sat nav is set for zero tolls the more secondary routes we therefore frequent take us deep into every valley and high up every peak, but at the moment we seem to be over the threat of tolls so we’re currently taking advantage of these smooth flat fantastic roads.

The cost for these roads must be in the billions. Here, there is so much new construction gone on this year that the updated satellite navigator maps I downloaded just before this trip are now frequently incorrect. Roads are suddenly appearing in blank spots on the sat navs mapping data – but still we find our way and still we bless our little electronic friend.

I am aware that our main focus on this trip is history and culture. But, culture comes in various shapes and sizes. Tonight proves the point. We have camped just east of A Coruna, heading towards Santiago de Compastela, the city of Pilgrims.   

We have been entertained again all afternoon and evening, by the Spanish. And their camping. Tonight we learned a few more amazing things about how the Spanish live in the summer.

We arrived in this obscure little campground where, as usual, not a soul speaks English, but we learned where the showers and toilets were, and we know what we have to pay for the evening, and everyone around us is smiling. Here, in this site, by a Spanish beach, the Spanish take summer camping to an art form. This is Kulture with a capital Kitchen.

Here, instead of the separate loggia style canvas kitchens we have seen being assembled in other campgrounds we’ve been on the coast road, the campers are building their own kitchens. Out of wood. Like Aussie Sheds, but these are kitchens. Attached to their tents, by gravel understories.

One kitchen shed is going in around the corner with fully fitted oak cabinets, electricity, freezer, fridge, and kitchen sink fully plumbed.

We. Are. In. Awe.

Peter is so amazed he is over with our next door neighbours having a discussion (speaking in Aussie while they speak in Spanish: but seemingly they understand each other) about all of this.

I was just invited in for a look see, too, so am now in the know.

It is all quite breathtaking.

Most of the mums and kids will stay here all summer from mid June (next week is Mid-June: not this week) to mid September: dads will come usually only on the weekends. (They have to lunch, siesta and passeo: so they are busy!)

Their caravan set ups stay here all year round usually. The wooden kitchen sheds that are going in around the campground today are all new.

The group next door to us leave their stuff here all year. To leave their rig here all year costs only €1200.

Their dining room is like a harem decor: with brand new floating sultry red curtains: designer: tied in two taut places to each pole, so that it does not billow around the dining room chairs.

Someone has organized for them to have a metre and a half cube of white designer rocks delivered to their campsite. All the campers have access to these rocks.

These are first offloaded and leveled to make the dining-room space, around which go the harem drapes.

Some people even have laminated floor covering fully laid, by the metre – for their entire living areas. (Even for the separate children’s play area which includes full sized doll houses!)

Others are taking home last years linoleum, satisfied with the designer rocks this year.

One lot around the corner have gone for the minimalist look. They have two glass (not wood) structures – extra to their sleeping spaces. Both are tres elegant. One has slim-line orange designer blinds over the glass enterior; the other white Japanese rice paper as blinds.

We are truly being entertained.

The sand, on the beach, is white. The air is pure. There is nothing but fun to be had here from June to September.

God alone knows how the pilgrims got passed here to Santiago, which is only just down the road.

We arrived in Santiago de Compostella. At mid-day we joined all the blistered pilgrims in the pilgrim mass in the Cathedral where, reputedly, the relics of Saint James, the apostle, lie in the vault here.

The cathedral is extraordinary. The exterior is baroque and awesome with stone practically turned to liquid the way the artisan stonemasons have made it twist, turn and curl. The main interior altar is all silver and gold: quite the most amazing bit of baroque bling I have ever seen inside a church.

Six confessors were hearing prayers before and during mass: in full view of the public pilgrims and sinners would face up the the monseignors on their knees to be absolved. One, was so overcome with gratitude at his absolution, that he kissed the priest effusively.

The mass was majestic: with 6 priests and a nun, in pure soprano, leading tens of hundreds of pilgrims in spine-tingling Kyries and Hallelujahs that reverberated in full-bodied chorus throughout those great vaulted spaces laced with giant urns swung pendulously spiking the air with incense.

Beck and I were both in tears: it was just so touching.

Another special place Santiago de Compostella.

Tomorrow, as we’re ahead of schedule, we head for Portugal.

Plaza de Toros, Santona

Fish on the barbie, Spanish style, Santona

Only Altamira replicas are now viewable

Love the pink tiles of Spain 

Glowering Picos de Europa, Spain

Fishing for lunch enroute 

Sculpture "Solidaridad" in Gijón, Spain

A Coruna campsite with permanent living areas

Jewelry shop facade,  Joyería Helvetia, Galicia, Spain

Inn Hospedería San Martín Pinario, Santiago de Compostela

College of Fonseca de Santiago de Compostela

Santiago de Compostela cathedral

A beautiful portion of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela

As Marias sculpture, dedicated to two sisters, Corelia and Maruxa Fandiño, Santiago de Compostela

Formal box hedge garden with skull and crossbones warning of 'fatal flora' often planted in cages,  Santiago de  Compestella, Spain

Hugging the coast of Galicia

We moved into the north western corner of Spain without even a border crossing check today. How times have changed. I remember one summer, a long time ago, being held up several times for several hours apiece at border posts as we crossed in and out of Germany, solely because Peter, with his long hair and beard in the seventies, looked like one of the much sought after Barder-Meinhoff gang. Today he looks more like a variation on Osama but no one even bothers to check if he is.

Initially, it was such a culture shock moving from our month of quiet village hops in rather remote parts of regional France along roads that were barely large enough to have a centre line, into the chaos that is the truck-ridden, smog-infested, labour-intensive autoroute-in-progress (still no tolls paid, Glen and Bill!) that is Spain. Still tonight we searched for peace and are camped high above Saint Sebastian noise -- where we have spent the day revisiting the pinxtos and passeo that makes Spain so special. 

Saint Sebastian is just wonderful. The city sits low and flat on a big fat bay with waves rolling in from the sea and it is surrounded by lush fantastically high green hills, and on the top of each – and you don’t even have to look hard – you’ll find a tall white statue of the Virgin Mary, arms outstretched, looking down on you. 

After a long afternoon exploring the city we joined the passeo there this evening, walking the old city streets (Parte Vieja), the new, and the long stretches of magical paths by the most beautiful bay – La Concha. 

I had forgotten how many teeny tiny old Spanish ladies there are: some still in couples – holding hands at eighty-- but most, now, walking with just their girl-friends. One, two or three old friends walking arm in arm, talking animatedly. In ear-rings. Wearing exquisite makeup. In high heeled shoes, after seven score years and more. Making an effort to look stylish -- purely for their evening walk. While we, in our functional walking boots and goretex jackets (still!), look for all the world like gauche Aussie tourists. Yet still they smile. I so love the Spanish. 

I had forgotten how they gesticulate as they talk. All emotive. The French are reserved in comparison. I had forgotten the beggars in the shabby streets: praying up at you from their favourite possies at the foot of worn columns in the Old City: pleading in their plaintive Latin chant for pennies from heaven to feed their starving children. 

I had forgotten the alcoholics – who bother no one, but lie like stupified lizards on any patch of pavement, or benchtop, in the soft Saint Sebastian sun. 

I had forgotten the gothic ornate white balustrades that decorate Spanish harbours and parks, and the tall ornamented white pedestal lights lined up all over the city. Too many white decorative curlicues can never be enough. The churches in the old and new city are popular with pilgrims. We had special smiles for the ones wearing shells stitched to their clothing. No worn or torn walking gear these days, though. Only the best will do. Berghaus mostly. Poor pilgrims no more. 

The roads between France and Spain have been ripped up. We have been driving over incredibly high coastal mountain roads and down into the deepest little valleys on the narrow roads that often, even on a sat nav, have no name. But, even there, everything is being ripped up. Whole mountain sides have been bulldozed out and bashed into road gravel. Indents in between two mountains have been filled in with ugly layered high density mass dwellings. I don’t think the sat nav has recognised a roundabout since France – so much road work is going on. 

Who is paying for these amazing roads being ripped up and rebuilt? Who lives in these multi-level high density apartments built in the middle of nowhere? It’s as tho’ Northern Spain is expecting in the very near future an influx of major population proportion from another land, and is preparing for it now. Not only is it an amazing expense all this infrastructure – but it is ugly. I won’t even like it when it is all done and there is no work to impede thoroughfare. 

In France, the first home owners’ house and land packages are seriously ugly. They are all tiny villa type dwellings, somewhat similar to an extended hut in a campground but painted pink or beige, usually, with a tiled roof, plonked on any block of land regardless of infrastructure. In Spain, new high density apartment-dwelling is all the go. 

Layer upon layer of hideous pink apartment blocks are being built everywhere, even in rural nowhere: pink or red clay besser block layers of ugly new apartments, filling in the spaces between two hills, destroying the view. Even mountains cut away for gravel look better. At least what’s left after the gravel is removed in layers is natural. While the ancient old stone homes, huts and barns languish: because they are too expensive to renovate. 

I had expected not to like Bilbao – as it has a history somewhat like that of Newcastle: a major coal and iron city -- instead, we stayed longer. We visited (as do millions of others a year) to see Frank Gerhy’s work: the Guggenheim Museum, which was on our Must Visit list – a building somewhat akin to Sydney’s Opera House. It is, architecturally, fascinating. I loved, and hated, different parts of it. Sydney’s Opera House is organic. It makes sense in terms of its lines, space, proportion, materials and its setting. It is almost perfect in its conceptualisation. 

The Guggenheim partly makes sense. And is somewhat similar in conceptualisation. The building looks like two large ocean liners docking, but too quickly, then…c.r.a.s.h! The building that can only really easily be seen from two sides is an agglomeration, a meshing, of this disaster. The ‘crash part’ is abstract, starkly beautiful, full of motion, all hard-edged silver and titanium in both harsh jagged pieces and smooth, perfect, gently-gliding lines: brilliant. A study in motion. Then, you have the rest: the dock bit - bulky, heavy, rectilinear, grey, concrete, dead. Debilitating. That bit of the architecture made no sense to me. That bit needed to be partly distorted along with the other mishshapen pieces in order to organically work. And it needed, like the Opera House, to sit on a huge expanse of water, not the little pool that seems too out of proportion. Space. The building needed more space, air - and water: to float. On all four sides. Then it would have been a truly beautiful piece of work. 

Around it, there is Maman: the copper-tinged arachnoid scupture on spindly legs-- huge, with a fertile egg sac high overhead – looking for all the world as if she has just dropped in from an outerspace Gulliver’s travel set in order to bear her babies. Maman is huge, predatory, protective and -- extraordinarily beautiful. Then there is Puppy. Puppy is a silly massive dog sculpture, which looks as though it has been made by a group of kindergarten kids perhaps using wire supports for flowers in pots. It is almost the height of the Guggenheim and, sadly, it is parked right at the visual front or the museum so that it does little but diminish the entrance. It has little or no grace, style, or taste. I’d like it gone. 

On to the medieval Old Town streets and the magic of the pinxtos bars. The Basques set out plates of pinxtos all along their bars twice a day: at aperitivo time, starting around 11am and before lunch at about 2 -- and then again in the early evening – or txikiteo (chick-e-tay-o) time. Pinxtos etiquette usually involves one drink and one pinxtos at each bar as you go barhopping with your friends searching the city for a later meal menu on offer that suits your fancy. Of the pinxtos we tried we loved the Basque classics of chunky wedges of potato and smoked sausage frittata, and bonito and mashed egg, and the delicious serrano ham. 

At the back of the old town we found the La Ribera Fish Market and spent ages watching the fish mongers (the ladies were so strong) in their white waterproof aprons splattered with blood and gunk hacking away at fish that just that morning had been swimming in the sea. 

We found here tiny little sea creatures being sold that were like nothing any of us had ever seen before--Percebe (pronounced: Per-theb'-ee). They looked like a length of a couple of cut-off joints of a tiny human finger, but a soft red-brown in colour, finished off at one end with a tough looking hard and very ugly grey toenail -- but smelling sea sweet and edible. All the seafood did – despite being served from the most primitive and basic concrete market stalls in almost medieval market conditions with ice, on which all the fresh fish were resting, melting rapidly and falling like rain into open drains in the floor at your feet. 

We took home, instead, thick steaks of salmon for dinner at less than $A10.00 a kilo. Phenomenal flavour. And white asparagus was still around in the fruit and vege market upstairs, but becoming scarce. Though leeks are appearing everywhere, so we’re indulging in vichysoise, now, thanks to the smuggled pressure cooker – and to the cool weather which continues encouraging delicious hot hearty meals.

The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

Alderdi Eder gardens, opposite the Town Hall and La Concha bay, San Sebastian

Gorgeous lights,  La Concha bay, San Sebastian

Don Quijote and Sancho Panza, San Sebastian

Countryside after San Sebastian

Coastline before Bilbao

A pilgrim enroute to Santiago de Compostela

Pinxtos in San Sebastian

Restaurante Víctor Montes Restaurant in Bilbao, Spain

Pilgrim sticks outside the Santiago Cathedral in Bilbao

The Mercado de la Ribera is a market square in Bilbao

Teatro Arriaga is an opera house in Bilbao, Spain

Square in Bilbao, Spain

Maman, The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Puppy at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

Ornate Cemetery enroute, typical of Latin countries