Sorry for the hiatus… On to Day 4.

In the morning, we took some time to shop, looking mostly in the old town. Karen and Dad wanted to find a silver spoon for Mom. Having heard we were looking for something like this, the cousins had picked one up for us–but it was a souvenir spoon with the Pontevedra crest on it, and Mom wanted something simpler. So we went to a few silver stores (there seemed to be quite a lot of them), and found something nice. In addition, we went to a pottery store where we picked up a nice coffee set, as well as some pins. The pins said “Non a Guerra” (“No to the War”) and “Nunca Maís” (“Never Again”).

Afterwards, we walked around town for about an hour before we went back to the hotel to meet Charo. Charo is another cousin; his father was jailed after the Spanish Civil War, and my grandfather helped support their family, sending money whenever he could. Charo said that one of his early memories was when Papa Hernan came to visit, and bought the family a lobster meal–an extravagance he had never seen before.

We ate lunch at another restaurant near the estuary, this time closer in to town; during that time, we enjoyed conversation and again, very good food. Charo told us about how we could get to the cathedral at Santiago, then showed us the way back into town before saying goodbye.

So off we went to the north, pretty much clueless about our destination beyond knowing that a big, old stone cathedral was somewhere in the town we were driving to. Naturally, we got kind of lost in the town, but as usual, the locals were very friendly and helpful, and pointed us in the right direction. By this time, the rain that had been predicted for our whole stay (which we had been lucky enough to avoid so far) caught up with us–but not too badly. We walked down the old-yet-touristy streets to the cathedral.

When we got there, we first looked around the square, appreciating the majesty of the cathedral and the surrounding architecture. When we approached the building, there was a guy dressed in what looked to be some quasi-Celtic gard, with a tray hanging from his shoulders, apparently selling the hard-to-identify items. I tried to wave him off when he approached me with his spiel, but he recognized that we were Americans and switched to English–and I still did not understand what he was selling. As I politely declined and tried to walk away, I caught the only sentence I understood: “You’re going in there looking like that?” I still have no idea what he was about.

As it was, we couldn’t get inside–a mass had just started, and no one was allowed to tour the cathdral until it was over. So we headed to one of the side streets to find a place to wait the hour. We found a little hole-in-the-wall cafe and had some churros and hot chocolate. The hot chocolate was like the kind my grandmother made for my father when he was a kid–very thick. We finished and headed back to the cathedral.

We got there and went in just as the mass was ending. It would be hard to explain what we saw, so I will leave you to view the photos in the photo page (see the end of this post). Suffice it to say, it was not hard to be impressed by the opulence of the interior. Sam and Will, not surprisingly, were most impressed by a certain metal grate protecting a display; the grate was mildly electrified, and by placing your hands in particular places, you could feel a low-level shock. They loved it.

At the end of the day, we headed back for Pontevedra, to make our way back to Madrid the next day. We had light all the way back–since Spain is both on daylight savings time and on the western edge of a time zone, it stays light out until 9:00 pm.

— Photos from the day are thumbnailed on the Day 4 Photo Page.

Coming Soon: Day Five: Back to Madrid, with a spectacular lunch on the way.