Day 39 - Santiago de Compostela

My last full day in Santiago: a nice lie in, a late breakfast in a plush cafe (coffee and tortilla as per usual) and a visit to the Museum of Galician Culture made for a relaxed day. And strangely the rain had stopped. The afternoon was rounded off by a beer in a street-side cafe watching the crowds go by.

The museum was interesting, an eclectic collection of tools and equipment associated with Galician industry and life: woodwork and metal work; clothing and instruments; agriculture and fishing. It reminded me of my dad’s garage. The stated aim of the museum was to expose people to Galician culture and to help them understand it; the breadth of exhibits certainly went some way towards this. However, it would have helped significantly if every label for every exhibit were not written in Galician - and only Galician. I can not work out whether this was arrogance or stupidity but as a means of educating non-Galicians on the Galician culture it provided an insurmountable obstacle and was counterproductive. Interestingly though, on exiting there was the usual appeal for funds - ‘we would not survive without the generous donations of our visitors..’ etc etc – written in a range of European languages and certainly on the part of the English translation grammatically perfect.

In the evening we met Rob and Greg for a farewell meal (a kebab!), a final drink with some other friends of theirs in another bar in town and then Gale and I headed off back to our hostel. Tomorrow we both depart Santiago, Gale for Madrid and me for home.