Tale of Two Cities

Part of our Northern Spanish journey involved visiting 2 cities – I seem to have grown a fascination with ancient architectural buildings – especially religious ones and Bob loves anything Roman!

How come the church always had the money to build these almost palatial cathedrals/monasteries/abbeys and they are always lavished with gold, sculptures and fantastical artwork. In those times I am guessing that was where the power and money was – religion.

We are both always amazed at how they built these structures without the power tools available today. How long would it have taken and the sheer manpower in numbers! How must it have felt to be part of building something so beautiful and I try to compare with something today and I can’t….

The first city we came across was Lugo by pure chance. I read about the Aire on the outskirts and where it was situated along our planned route and thought hell why not….We were not disappointed; in fact, we were totally in awed.  A magical city totally enclosed by the only intact Roman wall in the world. The walls reach 15m high and total in almost 2.2km in length. You can walk the whole circuit of the walls – it is wide and flat with 71 sentry towers and 10 gates along the circuit. Bob and I have walked a good part of Hadrian’s wall in England some 10 years ago, but this was a very different experience.

It is very popular with the locals for fitness and socialising as we saw many locals running or brisk walking or meeting with friends and chatting along the route. The views of the city as you walk the circuit are not to be missed, we witnessed flocks of starlings creating patterns in the sky for us at dusk as well as spotting the best areas to visit for a stroll within.

Contained within the walls is a stunning city with streets and lanes lined with shops, cafés and residential areas and the magnificent Santa Maria cathedral that dominates a large area. The buildings are tall and majestic, and the city feels clean and vibrant. We ate our supper at a café in the centre, Plaza Maior which at this time of year was decorated for Christmas with lights, music and stalls – it was busy with young people and families.

Lugo is situated 465m above sea level, our Aire was about halfway up from the river (which I walked down to the following morning with George), and we had to walk up several flights of steps and zig-zag hills to get to the roman city.   

I have since discovered that this part of northern Spain, the Galician region is another autonomous community within Spain like Basque Country and Catalonia with their own language and self-government. The capital of which is Santiago de Compostela the second Spanish city we visited and probably one of my most favourite places to visit so far….

Santiago de Compostela at the north-western corner of Spain, a most beautiful and ancient city that contains the cathedral where the apostle St James is supposedly interned. It is the culmination point of the Camino de Santiago, the walk of the pilgrims that so many Christians and many others have endured and completed for self-fulfilment and devotion. It is a place that I have always wanted to see as I have heard so much about it. I have since learnt that there are numerous routes to take but they all finish here and what a place to walk to, I can understand the emotion that those who walk feel when they reach this most historic and majestic city. I read that it was destroyed by Muslims at the end of the 10^th century but rebuilt the following century with Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque buildings and quite rightly professes to be one of the world’s most beautiful urban areas.

The cathedral itself was breath-taking and gave me the same feeling as when I entered Sagrada de familiar in Barcelona – the warmth, tranquillity, beauty and spirituality. You do not need to be religious to experience this, it was somewhere you felt safe and could sit for hours people watching, marvelling at the surroundings or lost in your own thoughts. Whilst visiting, I was lucky enough to watch a couple getting married and experience their celebrations outside afterwards. It is a day I will never forget.

The streets of the Santiago require more time than we had plus with George with us we were not able to take full advantage of the numerous restaurants, cafes, bars and patisseries selling mouth-watering seafood, Spanish wines and pastries. Definity a place to come back for longer without George!

My experience of this part of Spain was better than I had expected, it is a truly beautiful area and deserves more time to explore as I think we only touched the surface. The weather was cooler, and we wanted to get further south and into Portugal but there was still one more Spanish stop before we crossed another border.