After Salamanca it was time to hit up Santiago de Compostela in the Galicia region. My Italian friend Amar and I headed up there, and it was supposed to be a two-day trip in the Galicia region. For those of you who don’t know, Galicia is the northernmost region in Spain, directly above Portugal. So we went to Santiago and quickly discovered that the city was tiny; it took about three hours to visit, so the following day we made plans to visit nearby A Coruña. Anyways, so I’ll talk about Santiago first. This city is the final stop of the famous Camino de Santiago, or in English it’s better known as the ‘Way of St. James.’ Essentially it’s one of the longest pilgrimage walks in the world, and could start on the East of the Pyrenees in France, though people doing this walk can start at any point and don’t necessarily need to start in France. Anyways Santiago is the final stop and thus also quite religious and glamorous.
To note that the architecture and accent in Galicia are really different. In fact, similar to in Catalunya, here they speak their own language, Galician, which is basically a mixture between Spanish and Portuguese, and the architecture actually strongly resembles Northern Portuguese architecture, reminding me a little bit of Porto, with all the houses being stuck together and kind of white-washed, nothing at all like the rest of Spain.
Meanwhile, the next day we went to A Coruña and the first impression of the city was quite poor. A Coruña looked boring and plain, as if nothing was really going on. It did, however, boast a cool tower, called Torre de Hercules, and we did later discover some cool architecture and some quaint streets to walk down, so it actually wasn’t all that bad at all.
It was back to Madrid for my final, emotional days in my favourite city.
-Daniele
