Santiago De Compostela

I was pretty upset when the alarm went off at 7 in the morning for me to take the first shower of the day. But after contemplating breaking the alarm clock and just rolling over and going back to sleep, I rolled out of bed and got into the shower to start my day before anyone else in the room, those lucky girls! But we were all in the little restaurant next door by 8, eating our breakfast of another croissant, some bread with jam and more hot chocolate, so that we could be on the bus by 8:30. But as we all know, that’s really code for “show up whenever you want”, so we got on the road after debating whether or not to leave some people at 8:50. The bus took us to a hill outside of the city where there was a statute of a couple Pilgrims, and left us there to do as the pilgrims do, and find their way to the Cathedral in the heart of the city.
This cathedral is the Cathedral of St. James, and this is where James, one of Christ’s apostles, is reputed to be buried. People come on Pilgrimages for hundreds of miles from all over the place to see this cathedral and attend mass here. So the thought was that we were going to do the end of this supposedly well marked pilgrimage on our way to attend the Pilgrims mass. But the thing was that we couldn’t find any markers to tell us which way to go to finish this well marked trail. So after a little while of wandering on random trails that took us to a park, or right back to where we had started, we kind of abandoned the whole follow the trail idea and walked along the highway in the direction that we thought the city was, which did take us to the city, but the supposedly 10 to 15 minute walk ended up taking up the whole morning. It was still quite the interesting walk tho! We wandered through the outskirts of the city for a while and someone finally flagged down a car and asked for directions. Once we were headed in the right direction we would come across the path that we had originally wanted to be on, and followed it for a while, got a picture, then took a turn and lost it again. So we would walk a little bit more, take some random turn then stumble upon the right path again, then eventually end up losing it. Dang tourists. I am sure that if we were real pilgrims we would have been able to stay on the right path, but seeing as we are not so learned in the ways of the pilgrim path, we struggled a bit. But in the end we made it to where we were trying to go, and we even got there before mass started! We sat outside for a while, obviously exhausted from our lengthy pilgrimage, and enjoyed the beauty of the cathedral. It really is a beautiful building!

After we felt thoroughly rested, we decided to walk inside the cathedral before attending mass, to see what there is to see. On the way we were stopped by a merchant who told me that my Spanish was very good (woot! His flattery didn’t work, I didn’t buy anything from him) and after we finally got him to stop talking to us, we could walk through the big wooden doors and into the Cathedral of St. James. It was cool walking in because its beautiful inside, but it was kinda creepy at the same time. There were 3 hallway type things with pillars that separated them, the middle area had the pews for mass and the outside 2 were more like a walking area, but along the walls were tons of little confessional booths with priests sitting in them, a little light shining on their faces, and as you walk by, they just stare at you! I mean, I felt like I had to walk up to them and start confessing or something! “um… forgive me father, it has been 20 years and 3 months since my last confession…” (I don’t think that would have gone too well). So once we were inside we avoided them for a bit. We walked around and saw the supposed burial place of St. James himself. When we were walking back to the hall of the priests to sit down for mass, Missy all of a sudden got really curious about the whole confessional thing, and decided to go and talk to one of the priests. So after much hesitation, right in front of the booth I might add. The guy probably thought we were losers, looking at him then pretending like we weren’t really, then kinda walking towards him, then going back to where we were before. Haha, I can only imagine how we looked! But once we finally got up the guts, we walked up to him and Missy asked him where a famous pillar that all the pilgrims touch is. He told us that we aren’t allowed to touch it, and then asked us why when we came up we didn’t do the whole kneel and cross your chest thing, and we told him that we weren’t Catholic, then he was like, oh well do you have a religion? So we told him that we were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He smiled and nodded then said “que bueno”. Well that was kinda a conversation killer, the Mormons and the Catholic priest in the Cathedral. So we awkwardly walked away and back to our seats and waited quietly for mass to start.
Luckily a nun came and sat right in front of us, otherwise I would have never know when I am supposed to stand or sit or kneel or pretend to know what they are singing and sing along or whatever. This mass was different than the one in Toledo. There weren’t men sitting in the choir singing for this one, and the ceremony was a lot shorter, and I don’t remember ever kneeling. I was probably supposed to sometime in there, but I didn’t. Oh well. And in this ceremony, they didn’t offer the wine to everyone, just the priests. A funny thing is that while everyone was getting the bread, the priest that was supposed to be cleaning out the cup for the wine basically chugged the rest of the wine that was in the cup, poured himself some more, drank that, then started wiping out the inside. It was pretty funny!
When mass was over, Cassi, Missy and I were all a little tired from the lack of sleep that we had gotten the night before, so we headed back to our hotel for a little siesta, along with the rest of Spain. We got there and sat on our beds, saying that we didn’t even want to fall asleep, just sit for a while. But that did not turn out so well! Our planned short siesta turned into a 5 hour power nap!!! We woke up around 6:45, starving because we missed lunch. So we ran across the street to the little grocery store they had there, bought some granola and yogurt (and ice cream, of course) and headed back to our hotel room to enjoy our feast! That was about the highlight of the night, dinner was really good! We hung out in our room the rest of the night, being lazy. People would wander into our room for a while, hang out, chat, and leave. Then we went to bed! It was another good day in Spain!