As Charlie just posted, we spent a few hours in Sanxenxo today, up the coast a bit from Pontevedra. It has a long sandy beach. It was beautiful beach-walking weather so we did a bunch of that. We were pretty shocked how urbanized the area is along the beach front. I was trying to imagine what this town was like 50 or 100 years ago.
Silgar beach. Sculpture inspired by Celtic mythology symbolizing the beauty of the sea. (Madama de Silgar).Getting coffee in a pastry shop. We ordered the ones in the middle. The server brought out the ones on the side with the coffee. Whew!
We popped into a small church (unusual to find one open!) and were struck by how it was like a miniature cathedral complete with little chapels on the sides. It seemed like a toy cathedral. But very charming.
Little church in Sanxenxo. Seven rows of seats.Heading out of the church.Near the backThe other end of town, in front of restaurant where we had lunch. A very down home restaurant, with lots of locals eating there.We had the menu. We both had the same thing: salad and Sanjacobos. The salad was good. The other wasn’t bad but wasn’t great. We felt bad we didn’t eat something healthier, especially after those pastries earlier.
We took the bus, 30 minutes with lots of stops, out to the seaside resort town of Sanxenxo (San-shen-show) near Pontevedra. We walked the beach, it was low tide and fun to walk on, saw the harbor and had a nice lunch at a place frequented by locals. The fancier places are tapas places with no menu del dia.
We walked out the pier and came to the harbor:
We have visited many small boat harbors on this trip. We have posted a number of photos. They have cute little boats, often in some disrepair, obviously owned by people from the town.
I looked at these boats and, whoa, these are fancy boats. Here are some more:
Some of these are 40+ feet. We are getting into Portofino territory here. Actually I’m lying about that. We were in Portofino a few years ago and the boats in Portofino are as far above these boats as they are above the rowboats we have been seeing before. But still, pretty fancy boats, way more expensive that anything we have seen before on this trip.
We walked along farther and came upon a boat repair facility. They had 20-30 boats in dry dock. We saw a work cleaning barnacles off a propeller. I noticed their boat crane was being moved. Video here.
As you can see the key thing is: slow and careful. They were going to lift a boat out for repair. I didn’t see them lift it but here is the boat being attached to the crane straps. I love to see skilled workers doing their job and making it look easy.
As we have talked about in a previous post, Charlie and I are spending eight days in Pontevedra, a city of about 80,000 south of Santiago. Pontevedra is on the Camino that goes from Lisbon, Portugal, to Santiago. We walked that Camino, starting in Porto, in 2016. Yesterday, we decided to walk this Camino for a few miles going out of Pontevedra.
We got up, got dressed (no breakfast or coffee) and headed out. Good to be out in the cool morning. We started seeing pilgrims immediately. In general, pilgrims like to get an early start, either to beat the heat or to get to their destination before others so they get the bed they want.
And almost immediately, I started missing being a pilgrim, going to Santiago. It’s not the same being on the Camino if you are just out for a hike and have to retrace your steps to get to your place for the night. I felt jealous of the many pilgrims that we saw. Not exactly logical.
About three miles out of town we heard a woman behind us say “Is that a Zia symbol I see?” Turned out it was a woman from Santa Fe. She had spotted my “American Pilgrims on the Camino, Albuquerque Chapter” patch that was on the flap of my backpack. We chatted a bit and it was clear the woman she was walking with (not from Santa Fe) wanted to chat more, but the Santa Fe woman was in a hurry. They were the only USA Americans we’ve met on this trip on the Camino. (We’re not counting the guy from Portland who now lives in Galicia.)
Woman from Santa Fe and her partner leaving us in the dust
There was a bar nearby, a little off the Camino, so we decided to head there for breakfast and coffee. The woman tending the bar was so nice. She said she couldn’t make us fried eggs but she made us ham and cheese bocadillos with some delicious bread.
Very nice woman who made us breakfast sandwiches
After that we headed back to Pontevedra. It was interesting walking backwards on the Camino. There were lots of pilgrims coming towards us. Everyone was friendly and many said “hola” or wished us a “buen Camino” but they usually looked at us quizzically like, “huh, you look like pilgrims but why are you walking that way?” No one actually voiced the question out loud. We couldn’t believe how many pilgrims we saw. Maybe over 100 total.
Lots of pilgrims
Did you spot anything interesting in the above photo? There was a woman carrying a young baby. Here is a close up:
Pilgrim carrying a baby. That was a first for us.
Then shortly after that we passed a family with a young child. She was probably 11 or so. Another first for us, I think.
Young child walking the Camino
One more thing of note from the walk. We spotted this as we were getting back into Pontevedra:
Spotted on the way back but not on the way out
Spain is such a funny country. The above pretty amazing sculpture was way up on top of somebody’s garage.
Sculpture above someone’s garageAlso spotted walking back into Pontevedra. Tile on the back of someone’s house. I liked it.
