City Hopping

After spending the work week in Lugo, I hopped through a couple cities before arriving in my next horticultural destination. Because my flight left Santiago de Compostela early Sunday morning, I spent all day there on Saturday site-seeing. Santiago de Compostela, like Lugo, also has a breath-taking, Baroque cathedral, though even grander in scale. The cathedral, named after St. James (Sant Iago) because his remains are said to have been discovered there and are now in the crypt below the alter, is the final destination of pilgrims who, even to the present day, walk the more than 500 kilometers from the Pyrenees. After touring the cathedral, I strolled through the city market, admired the fresh produce, and now having long realized the Spaniards’ love for pork, was not astounded by the giant pig heads hanging from he ceiling of the meat market. I went for a run around the university and a park that overlooked the city, with rhododendrons and camilias in blossom. Though the morning had been dreadfully foggy, by the early afternoon, it had burned off to reveal a beautiful, blue sky and a gorgeous view of the cathedral. Considering that Galícia is infamously rainy, I revelled in my good luck with such fine weather. That evening, I went to a visiting exhibition of Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo - wife of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. I was introduced to Kahlo’s art a couple years ago by my friend Brenda. The exhibition was excellent, and I liken Kahlo’s art to that of famed Spaniard Dalí: unusual, graphic, thought-provoking, and perhaps even outrageous. Although, Kahlo’s paintings are much more personal and passionate, as they are her life put on canvas.

My early flight out of Santiago de Compostela on Sunday morning returned me to Madrid for the day. I went to mass that morning at the Church of San Jose and then passed the day in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, which with the Prado and Museum of Queen Sofia completes the triangle of Madrid’s art pride. The museum’s collection is the composition of a wealthy art-collecting family, whose name the museum bears. The art spans eight centuries, from Gothic to Modern, and has an array of Impressionistic and Post-Impressionistic work by greats like Renoir, Van Gogh, Monet, and Degas: some of my personal favorites. There are also salons dedicated to American landscapes and American artists like Windslow Homer and Georgia O´Keefe. Then, after the museum and a bit of wandering, I made my way down to the Atocha train station. Atocha was the location of the terrorist bombing a couple years ago, but it is actually pretty nice inside now, as far as train stations go, having a tropical forest in the main waiting area. I sat there a while to pass the time, watching people. A boy fell into the pond where there were turtles swimming, but he was recovered. An old man of 84 years sat next to me, and we started chatting. He wanted to know my story, so I told him some of it. He asked my age but didn’t believe it when I told him, and then he told me his. I told him I didn’t believe him either just to be nice. Before he left, he told me to be careful of, in a whisper, “ladrones” (thieves). I thanked him for his advice, and he left. After that, I was noticing some suspicious-looking characters wandering about, and after making eye contact with a couple, they didn’t frequent my side of the waiting area anymore. Eventually, my platform number was posted on the board, and I made my way to the train that would take me to Córdoba for the next week. There, Joan had contacts that agreed to show me the olive research of Andalucía.

Pictures of Santiago de Compostela are in the Galícia folder and Madrid photos from this day are together with those from my previous stay in the Madrid folder at my Shutterfly website.