Where in the world are David and Kate today? Exploring Santiago de Compostela

Oh what a lovely 36 hours it has been. And so lacking in pressure. It is quite hard to express how I feel at this stage in the Camino. Satisfied is probably quite a good word! The Hotel San Nicolas has been an excellent choice. It is outside the hustle and bustle of the city centre, so it is quiet. There is a lovely bar across the street, where we had 'breakfast' of hot chocolate this morning and a glass of wine which came with a free tiny plate of seafood concoction this evening. And the walk into the centre of Santiago takes only 10 minutes (though it is quite steeply uphill, it has to be said).

We have been in town much of the day, exploring, even buying a few souvenirs and finally visiting the cathedral. More of that in a moment, but first something else. Yesterday in our hunt for the Pilgrim Office, which was very hard to locate, we stumbled across a photographic exhibition about Coptic Christianity, and filed that away on our to-do list for today, and later on yesterday we came across a second photographic exhibition (with two different exhibits), which we looked at there and then. All three exhibits were extremely powerful and moving. Whatever the level of commercialisation of Santigo the city, there is a real effort being made to have a strong cultural programme going on, and these were part of it. (Alongside that, there are plenty of street musicians providing an alternative cultural programme! The picture shows a bagpipe/clarinet duo - that worked really well - and we've seen lutenists, guitarists, and all sorts.)

The first exhibit we looked at yesterday was about pilgrimage to Jewish, Muslim and Christian sites, and followed an unusual path from Jerusalem, through Jordan and Turkey, then the devastated Balkan states, through Italy to Rome, before turning through France and Spain to Santiago. There were some extremely powerful images there. In the same building, the Mosteiro de San Martino Pinario, was an exhbition mainly of huge portraits of people from isolated villages in Italy and Spain where the local culture is in the process of dying. Those were quite astounding - from a distance, some looked drawn, or painted, but close up the level of detail in the images was fantastic. The eyes were frequently the most arresting feature. The question in our minds was "What have they seen?" Today's exhibit about Coptic Christians in Ethiopia was incredible too - large black and white pictures - extremely striking and expressive. The books accompanying the exhibitions were enticing, but large, expensive and heavy, and we have plenty of luggage already with all my stuff to drag home. What a pity. Those will be some of the things we remember most.

The cathedral was 'interesting'. We skipped it for the morning because there were huge queues. We hadn't taken account of the crowds there would be on a Saturday. Instead we went and had an earlyish lunch, calculating that the queues might die down when proper Spanish lunchtime (i.e. 2-4pm) arrived. We were right, so when we finally went in it wasn't too crowded, though it was astonishing how many people (mainly Spaniards) were wandering round in groups talking at the tops of their voices. There were plenty of people obviously at prayer in the place, but it was very odd from my point of view. A beautiful, simple structure, with garish ornamentation jammed in, producing a strange disharmony, and a slightly grimy feel. Looking up into the cupola was incredible in one way - the size, the mechanism for the botafumeiro, the light. But the windows up there were full of cobwebs, just as the exterior stonework is covered in weeds - yes, weeds - even at very high levels on the building. Holy water stoops converted into offering boxes struck the wrong note too.

When we emerged today the queues had built up again, and so I didn't spend ages waiting to visit the shrine of St James. That can wait for tomorrow. My cultural book rates the cathedral as being worth a great deal of time to absorb, equating it to Burgos in that sense, but my reaction to it was similar to Burgos - at least today I didn't feel a desire to linger, but tomorrow we will go to mass. Hopefully that will feel different. Don't get me wrong, we have enjoyed the city, in spite of the commercialism and in spite of a somewhat indifferent reaction to the cathedral interior. It is architecturally unique, and full of rich and interesting things to see. I am enjoying not being on the move, and it is proving a really good wind down. We had a lovely siesta time today, and I feel extremely relaxed. Sleep is calling now, and then tomorrow is another new day - as it always is.