Catching up on Our Trip to Galicia, Spain

A children's folklorico group at Vila dos Infantes. The
leader is getting them ready to perform.  

There are so many experiences from our last trip that I wanted to blog about all the time we were there. But I also needed to finish the rewrite of my cozy mystery--which I did. Now I'm back home, putting the rewrite chapters together for some beta readers to read and give me new feedback. And now I'm free to post again. Despite a lot of rain, it was a wonderful trip.

One particular day stands out,  and that is May 17th. May 17th is my husband's birthday, and in recent years we usually are in Galicia when that happens. It is also El Día de las Letras for all of Galicia, celebrating Galician authors and poets and the freedom for Galicians to read and write again in their own language -- Galego. (Under Franco, it was forbidden.) But friends of ours, Elvira and José, had also been urging us each year to see special festivities at a village called Vilanova dos Infantes, near the city of Celanova.

 The festival includes folklorico dancing groups all day long, as well as artisan displays of spinning, weaving, ceramics, basketry, among other crafts, and it takes place every year on May 17th. So this time we and several friends attended it, and later attended a lunch party by Elvira and Jose afterwards.

We spent the morning strolling around the village, enjoying the dances and displays, before going to our friends' house for lunch. The groups varied in ages, as you can see. Enjoy some of these photos. (I wish I had thought to video it so that you could hear the music.)

As we wandered through the village, we encountered various parades with the musicians using typically Galician instruments. One such instrument is the Galician bagpipe, called the gaito. A gaito player is called a gaitero, and famous gaiteros give concerts all over Galicia. As you can see in the pictures below, the musicians start out young to learn their art.

I tried to get pictures of the artisans at work, but streets were too crowded. And, much as I was tempted to buy a vase, the problem of transporting it without breakage was too challenging.   So, it was enough to enjoy the experience.

 Afterwards we went to Elvira's home to enjoy a sumptuous feast of a luncheon she had laid out for us: so many dishes, and all of them delicious. She and José are such gracious hosts, and you can see we all had a great time with food and wine and wonderful company. (We met Elvira through our friend, Jacki Edmonds, and how we wished Jacki were there to join us.)

Then, of course, Elvira and José decided to do a quemada.



A quemada is both a special drink and the vessel and cups it is prepared and served in. The ingredients are coffee beans, orange peel, apple slices (and some people add other touches), sugar, and, most of all, aguardiente, a homemade brandy in every home that will blow your head off if drunk straight. In a quemada, the effect is reduced because of the way it is prepared. You put all of the ingredients into the quemada bowl, set fire to the liquid, and stir continually until the blue flames die down. (A lot of the alcohol burns off--but not all!)
Here are the masters plying their skill:

José

The blue flame

Elvira

And then, alas, it was time to start the drive home. But before departure, I took a few pictures of Elvira's home and view. We love the old stone buildings of villages like this -- they are everywhere in Galicia. And you can see the peace and serenity of Galicia in the view from her window--both the vegetable garden she and José tend, and the layers of hills seemingly without end.

How about you? Do you have a favorite place that seems to exude peace and serenity? Do you like old buildings? Do you garden? If so, flowers or vegetables? Or both?

Fiesta de San Froilán

Below you can see us standing on the top of the wide wall that surrounds the original Lugo, an old Roman wall with arches entered via a cobbled street. These openings are remnants of the higher part of the old wall, much of which is gone now. To stand here is to have your feet firmly in the past.




Here we are, still in our first week in Galicia, and it has felt jam-packed. We arrived Monday evening, late. It was midnight before we got to bed. Then we spent the first couple of days opening the house, vacuuming and dusting, etc., and unpacking. Thursday we met friends in town at our favorite café bar in Monforte, Adega do Carlos, and yesterday we went to Lugo and stayed overnight for the San Froilán Fiesta.

The festival actually goes on for eight days, and yesterday, Friday, was the major religious day as San Froilán is the patron saint of Lugo, and the second day was the actual saint's day. Lugo is an ancient city about 60 miles north of Monforte, and it has both a Roman and Celtic past. (Well, for that matter, you can say that of all of Galicia: a Roman and Celtic past. There are old Roman bridges with arches everywhere, and the culture is both castiliano and galegan .)

What's fascinating about Lugo is that the center of town—the original town—is enclosed in a circular wall with about 17 arched entrances; a wall so thick it's wide enough for a car to drive atop, although only walking is permitted. Inside the walls are the old crooked cobbled streets, replete with restaurants and café bars, as well as two cathedrals and several plazas. Once we drove in and found the closest parking garage to our hotel, we unpacked and headed out to stroll the plazas and listen to music. Because it was the saint's day, all the clothing shops, etc., were closed, although eateries and bakeries were open.

Around the Plaza Mayor two huge stages were in preparation for the evening orchestra/bands.  But the ayuntamiento (council building) flanks one side of the Plaza Mayor, and the municipal orchestra of Lugo was playing excerpts from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, as well as music by Rodrigo and other composers. Really lovely to listen to. Walking down one of the narrow streets, waiting for lunch time (2:00 p.m.), we heard strains by Mozart floating from a restaurant's open doorway.

We are vegetarians, so sometimes it's hard to find restaurant food in Spain, but, luckily we eat fish and seafood. So we had a really tasty lunch of croquetas bacalao (codfish), grilled prawns, and—a real adventurous "first" for us—steamed cockles with lemon. My goodness, they were good. They looked to me like tiny versions of clams, and they had that "ocean" flavor that was quite evocative. Along with wine, of course.

After lunch, wandering around, we found a band in rehearsal at the Plaza Santa Maria. They were playing all the traditional Galician music with traditional instruments. Their orchestra was composed of four harps, four bagpipes, four violins, six tambourines, one huge set of drums and a smaller drum, and about eight "lap" organs with handles, as well as castanets and a mouth instrument that was "twanged".  The music was haunting and beautiful, and sometimes sounded Irish, and sometimes sounded Greek, and sometimes sounded Spanish. Just fantastic. Later, around nine p.m., after a picnic dinner in our room, we heard the concert all over again and enjoyed it just as much. Then, at 10:30 p.m. we returned to the Plaza Mayor to listen to another Latin orchestra. We sat and enjoyed that until nearly midnight, and then returned to the hotel and went to bed.

After rolls and coffee at a bakery this morning, we walked along the shopping areas (and I did find a nice belt and scarf.) We returned, then, to the "artesian" tent, where local artisans were showing their beautiful handicrafts. And then we headed back "home" around noon.

Weather-wise, we have been lucky. Except for rain this morning, and not a heavy one, it's another beautiful sunny day. And now, I must wrap this up. I'm at a wi-fi café, and I want to post this before we return to the house. Later, I'll try to post some pictures.

Meanwhile, for us, Galicia is a magical place. I write poetry about it at times. Before we started coming here, McKinley Park in Sacramento used to affect me that way. Do you have a place like that? If so, where?

We’re Here in the Land of Mist and Mañana

We left Sacramento Sunday morning, and already the week is drifting by. How can Saturday have come so soon? 

It’s a long flight from Sacramento to Santiago. We changed at Dallas and again at Madrid, with generous wait times between flights to make sure any delayed flight would not make us miss the next. Our friends met us in Santiago. By the time we picked up our baggage, it was 6:30 in the evening. They drove us to Monforte, a drive of about an hour and a half, where we shopped for basic groceries. Then we all had dinner around 8:30 at a cafe-bar-restaurant called O Pincho. (Dinner at 8:30 or later . . . . That’s when you know you are in Spain.) 

After trudging through airports and lugging carry-ons around for close to 26 hours, we practically fell into bed Monday night and had a good long sleep. One of our last, I might add, because jet lag kicked in the next day and is only starting to fade: we become sleepy or wide awake at very odd hours. 

It’s wonderful to be here, taking short walks with our neighbors in the village, driving into Escairon for café con leche, or into Monforte to sit at an outdoor table in the big plaza, enjoying a glass of wine. Or going to Adega do Carlos for raciones at lunchtime (which is between 2:00 and 4:00 p.m. in these parts.) Or meeting our neighbors again, late in the day, at the bench down the lane, sitting and talking with them until clouds turn pink and the air turns suddenly cool. Already these lovely friends have loaded us up with potatoes, figs, tomatoes, peppers, and home-made wine. In addition, we’ve been setting up lunch and dinner dates with friends we haven’t seen since our last trip, and tomorrow night is the Fiesta in Tuiriz (a village/town within walking distance, although we will drive, since we won’t go until around 9:30 or so.)

Meanwhile, the mist rises each morning in the lowlands beyond the pastures below our gate—rises and disperses in wispy curls before a new misty layer forms below. It’s a procedure that repeats with variation for much of the morning. I watch it from the galería window as I study my Spanish.

But I have other homework on this trip, thanks to Rachael Harrie at Rach Writes and her Challenge #2 for the Platform Building Campaign. I have to figure out how to come up with 200 words, using miasma, lacuna, oscitate, synchronicity, sneaking in a reference to a mirror, and including the word imago in the title. It certainly is an interesting and fun assignment, but thank goodness she is giving us a week-and-a-half for this particular challenge!  

Hopefully I’ll have come up with something in a couple of days, so keep tuning in. In addition, you can connect at Rachel's site to the versions all the other writers come up with, and it's really wonderful to see the creativity in the different responses to the same challenge. 

Ciao for now.