This is just cool

Very good water filter bottle for cleaning any water. The British military already bought all of them.

Buscando España

Santiago de Compostela Cathedral

Somehow the visiting of foreign places makes the here and now a little more dull when I return, even if the "here and now" is itself foreign to me. I guess every place is less foreign when you return to it, perhaps by definition. In any case, I loved the food, the language, the lifestyle, the weather and most of all the people of Spain. Even packed into six days of zooming around.

We arrived in Santiago de Compostela a week ago today, less hard working than most of the pilgrims who visit this purported burial place of Saint James. I could never quite work out the name Santiago until Miguel broke it down for me - and gave a bit of a push to connect Iago with James. In any case, a stunning town/city full of history and beautiful architecture to go along with all the pilgrims. I would love to do one of the journeys - ideally from the Pyrenees, by bicycle - at some point. English people don't seem to visit the north of Spain nearly so much as the south, but I found it
wonderful, not so hot and full-to-bursting with great food. I'm not the first to "discover" it, but it was almost perfect enough to believe I was.

After that first day, we spent a couple of days exploring the Galician coastline both north and south of A Coruña, swimming at great beaches, eating ridiculously good food (my friend Polly would have called it repulsive, disgusting, or nauseating, it was so good), and generally enjoying ourselves too much. Over the weekend we went down to the area where Miguel's wife Rosa grew up, where her family still lives. It's beautiful seaside fishing and farming villages, framed by small but spectacular hills and filled with lovely Spanish people. I'm gushing so much I've used the hated expression "lovely" to describe someone. Thank heaven I'm returning to the US next week, my American vocabulary is nearly dead.

We spent a last day in town, seeing the sights and, one last time, eating an incapacitating amount of food, this time with Miguel's family at a little place they have in the hills above town. Some obscene amount of grilled meat(>3kg for seven people), all locally raised and organic so that the colon cancer will be slower. I love Spain.

p.s. Does anybody know of a way to link from the web to Google Earth? I wanted to give locations of the beaches and whatnot, but can't be bothered to play with it more than superficially. If not, can you contact Google and have them get on this? I mean, I figure they already have a ridiculous amount about me in those databases...