Santiago de Compostela has been full of surprises for me. As I mentioned previously, the weather has been cooler and wetter than I thought it would be. Ascension, a city holiday that took up half of my stay here, was also unexpected. Ascension is a festival commemorating Mary’s ascension to heaven. I’m sure there were…

I ventured out of Santiago again, this time to the north and east regions of Galicia. On this trip I got to see more of the landscape in this region. Everything is green, but in this area I could see more of the farmland. It looked a lot like Scotland, minus the hairy coos. Beach…

Galicia is in the northwest part of Spain. It is a mix of Spanish, Celtish (!), and Portuguese and rains a lot. Like a lot a lot. I didn’t know any of this before I randomly picked Santiago de Compostela as my home base in Spain for a month (super smart, right?). When I took…

This morning I learned a valuable lesson at the train station. I was on platform 1 at 9:53 and when a train pulled up I started to board but luckily checked with the taciturn train worker before I did. After showing him my ticket and pointing to the train (since I can’t speak Portuguese), he…

I arrived in Lisbon after two quick flights (San Francisco to Boston and Boston to Lisbon). I had an unfortunate middle seat on the first leg and the dufus on the aisle did not adhere to the principle of middle seats get the arm rests. If you didn’t know that was an unspoken rule, let…