Tres peregrinas en Santiago

I went to Santiago de Compostela last weekend with two of my friends, Stephannie and Erika. They're both from the USA as well, but they speak Spanish much better than I do, and they were really awesome travel buddies.
Anyway, we left Vigo Friday afternoon, and we took the train to Santiago. It was about an hour and a half train ride, so we got to see quite a bit of the Galician countryside. The thing about this region of Spain is that it's really green and mountainous, with a lot of trees. So riding on the train made me feel a lot like I was on my way to Hogwarts.
We made it to Santiago okay, and the first thing we wanted to do was find our hostel. However, we forgot to print off the directions, so we spent about two hours asking around trying to find it. And I would like to thank the wonderful bus drivers, police officers, and old ladies of Santiago for giving us yankees directions. We finally made it to our hostel, dropped off our stuff, and then went exploring. There was a mall really close to the hostel, so we spent some time there, ate dinner, and headed back to the hostel.
Saturday was when we did everything. Literally, everything. We ate breakfast at a cafe and had churros and chocolate, which is one of the most amazing inventions ever. And then we walked around the streets of Santiago for a while, looking for the cathedral.
The Camino de Santiago (the way of St. James) is one of the most important pilgrimage routes in Christianity. There's a legend that St. James's remains were carried there and he was buried in Santiago, and the Cathedral was built up around him. For a long time, and even today, a lot of people walk the Camino de Santiago to get to the Cathedral. The length of the trip depends on where you start walking, the most famous route, the Camino Francés, starts in France. I admire their dedication, because my friends and I didn't even walk from our hostel. But no matter how you get to the Cathedral, it's absolutely incredible.
We spent a couple hours in the Cathedral, and as beautiful as the outside is, the inside is even better. I'm not going to post any of those though; you guys will just have to see it for yourselves.

After we left the Cathedral, we were accosted by a clown in the Plaza de Obradoiro, which is where this picture was taken. We ran away from him and did some shopping in the Rúa de Franco, which is the old part of the city. It's also really beautiful, and it's also where all of the night life in Santiago is found.
We also made a new friend on Saturday, a girl from Brazil who is studying abroad in Portugal. She was staying in the hostel with us, and we all went out on Saturday night and had a lot of fun.
On Sunday, we slept pretty late and did some more shopping before we got on the train to Vigo. I bought a Tarta de Santiago for my host family. The tarta is a cake made of almonds with powdered sugar on top. It's okay, definitely not my favorite dessert though. And then we said goodbye to Santiago. It was a lovely city with wonderful people, and I hope that I'll get to go back someday. I also hope that you guys will go there someday as well.

I'm planning a trip to Madrid soon, so I'll hopefully have a post about that trip in a couple weeks!

Jamón, jamón

Living with a family means that I get an authentic Spanish food experience while I'm here. My abuelita cooks traditional Galician recipes that have been in her family for forever, and some of my favorites have been:
Tortilla de patatas : an omelette with fried potatoes and onions.
Cocido gallego : a stew with everything in it. Seriously, EVERYTHING.
Empanadas : a pastry stuffed with peppers, onions, and meat OR with fruit.
Bocadillo : it's a sandwich, but it's awesomer than an American sandwich because of the bread in Spain, which we eat with almost every meal.
Croquetes : a roll of fried breadcrumbs or something, with a filling of mashed potatoes, meat, and other deliciousness.
Other food that's really popular here is chorizo, which is a cured, smoked sausage. I don't really like eating it by itself, but it's really good in stews and stuff. I had garbanzos with chorizo, and that was amazing.
Jamón : we eat so much ham here, it's ridiculous. It's really good though. There's a lot of different types of ham too, including jamón serrano, which I am going to miss when I go back to the US. There's also jamón iberico, paleta, and jamón york.
One of my favorite things here is going out for tapas. We go to a bar, or a bunch of different bars, and order a drink and pick up a few different small plates of food. My favorite tapa was bread with some kind of ham and cheese on top.
Since Spain has completely different food, I miss a lot of different foods from the United States. I miss chili, Dr. Pepper, Mexican food, sushi and other Asian foods, and pepperoni pizza. We have pizza in Spain, but apparently no one has thought of putting pepperoni on one. So, if anyone would like to send me any of these things, my address is Camino... Just kidding about sending me American food. Mostly.
I ate at a McDonalds here to see if there were any differences between the American and Spanish McDonalds, and I have to say, American Micky D's beats the Spanish one any day. First of all, they give you more unhealthy food for your money, and it tastes a little bit better. It's McDonalds, so it doesn't taste great in either place, but still. They also have a lot of Burger Kings and Dominos, but I haven't tried them yet. I'll keep you guys posted.

The wine here is also good. La Rioja is a region of Spain that's famous for producing really awesome wines, and it's right next to Galicia. So I can buy a decent bottle of wine for about 2 euros, which is about 3 dollars. I love Sangría as well; it's a drink made with red wine, fruit juice, and fruit. It's a little bit sweeter than regular wine, and it's yummy. The only sad thing is that tequila is really expensive here, so that means no margaritas for me. :-(


I just realized that I am really horrible about updating my blog. But in my defense, I'm in an exciting new country, and I'm lazy.