More time
here in Santiago, some sleeping in till late, going for drives and walks.
Figured out
what I was doing wrong with driving.
They all drive on the right
hand side of the road here, not just a few of them, so realised that if you can’t
beat them, join them. By the time I gladly
returned the hire car, only slightly broken (me, not the car), I think I had gained
some sense of confidence with the driving.
Is not so much the mechanics (right hand on gear stick, sticking to the
right hand side, rear view mirror to the right not the left) but that my sense
of awareness of the road and traffic is completely absent, very much like
learning to drive again.
We drove to
Paso de Oca (pronounced “Ocker”), which was set up in the 1700s as a palace of
refuge for half-broken Australian drivers.
The gardens were magnificent, with formal layouts, mazes made of
camellia trees, hedges in the shapes of characters and animals, water features
and ponds and streams. Vegetable gardens
and orchards all laid out in symmetrical patterns with hedge borders etc.
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| Paso de Oca - a corn store |
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| Paso de Oca - Labyrinth |
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| Paso de Oca - nice idea for my garden |
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| Paso de Oca - one of many creative hedge works |
Eating here
is good. A common feature across all of
Spain so far is a Menu de Dia which is a three course set menu with a choice of
about 6 first plates, second plates and then dessert and or coffee, often with
a bebida (drinkie). The standard Spanish
and Galician beer (cerveza) is a light and refreshing lager (e.g. Estrella
Galicia). The menus have some common
meals and some local themes, which is helpful for me to interpret. Tapas is also very common in most cafes and
taperia but we haven’t quite figured out the best way of ordering these tasty
little treats. Found a good one in
Sigüenza that seemed to understand our pointing and grunting and half a dozen
Spanish words … but that gets ahead of the story, Sigüenza is later …
A drive and
then a long walk to a waterfall near Santiago de Compostela was a nice
time. A very beautiful part of the
world, wetter and greener than inland or southern Spain. Galician is a different language, closer to Portuguese
than Spanish, but being such a polyglot I find I can point and grunt in
Galician also.
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| Waterfall - Fervenza do Toxa |
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Monday
was about saying goodbye to our hosts and making the train trip back to
Madrid. Our stay with Maria and Aaron
and their lovely girls Gabriela and Elouisa, Maria’s parents Manolo and Ramona
was such a treat.
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