Memories of a Museo

Museums.  I think if this word was to be in a word association "test", most, if not many would answer dust!  Or perhaps in a kinder moment, simply old or perhaps boring.  I don't know why but it's never been that way for me.  Maybe because they've been a part of my life for nearly as long as I can remember.

As children we were taken (yes some days dragged!) to museums of all sorts.  A favorite was the Trolley Museum in Connecticut.  The Trolley Museum meant being able to climb all over the machinery.  There were trips to other museums with my stateside grandparents.  They lived just outside Philadelphia.  We kids would get to stay for a week, all by ourselves, reveling in being the center of attention.  I remember Omi asking me where I wanted to go each time I was with them.  The answer was rarely anything but the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  One of my all time favorite rooms has a lovely reflecting pool in the center of the gallery.  Sometimes it was hard not to want to play in the water!  Just sitting on the marble bench swinging my feet, next to my Opa, that was fun too.

So I guess, me finding my way into museums in Santiago was just natural.  I wandered thru parts of the Cathedral Museum with Hunter prior to our taking the trip up to the roof.  On my final day in Santiago, as I continued to struggle finding tokens of rememberance for the family back home, I found my feet unerringly leading me to the Museum of Pilgrimage. It is actually incredibly close to the Cathedral and to where I was staying at the Seminario.
The entry fee isn't much.  As a perigrina, with credencial or Compostella even that small fee is waived!  Doesn't get much better than that does it!

The first few rooms were dedicated to pilgrimage in general.  There were examples of different pilgrimages around the world.  In one of those rooms I found this lovely mandala.  

In one of the halls, these tiles were on the ceiling.  I would have loved to have had copies of them.  The beautiful green and the soft ochre tones of the shells...very restful, I think.  Almost like looking at them underwater.

My fascination with columns and capitals continued here in the museum where they were wonderfully displayed where someone like me can truly examine them up close and personal.  This was like a dream come true for me, getting to see them so close and no ladders! Both my feet firmly on the floor. 

Now mind you there was a lot more to be seen there besides capital!  There were arches!!

As beautiful as this is now...worn and weathered, imagine how stunning it must have looked like when the velvet was new!

I had to fight the urge to touch these...so I zoomed in with the camera to compensate!

This is one of the most beautiful paintings, in my opinion!  An absolute jewel.

So, next time your in Santiago de Compostella, and looking for something to do, wander round the corner and have a look see at this lovely little gem of museum.  The staff are very welcoming, although the ones working that day didn't speak much English, they could not have been nicer or more helpful.  I'm including a link to their website so you can find them even more easily.  They absolutely should be on everyone's visit list!

www.mdperegrinacions.com

I'm also including the link to the cathedral, and the information about the museum there and the hours are included.

http://www.catedraldesantiago.es/ing/webcatedral.html

It was in the museum that I finally found things to bring home that felt right.  I bought a cd called Canto de Ultreia.  If I was more talented on the computer, I might even be able to include some of the haunting music from this CD, which is playing as I type here.  I also bought three tiny blue and white plates with a scallop shell on them, one for each household.  Supporting the museum by making these purchases also just felt right to me at this particular time.  They didn't feel like just purchases for the sake of buying something.  They were tangible reminders of my journey, and a way of sharing it with family back home.    Another friend bought rosaries along the way.  Again, a lovely way to bring a piece of the Camino home.  Funny, still haven't been able to go into a mall since I've been back!  Not once.  Several museums...no malls!

Up on the Roof!!

The days I spent in Santiago were desperately needed.  They were very special in their own way.  Talking with other pilgrims in Santiago, I found I wasn't alone in that feeling.   To grab a flight straight home seemed simply unimaginable, and in a way wrong.  Even now, months later, I'm really just starting to feel like my feet are on the ground here at home.  As much as they ever may be again!  But then...they weren't exactly on the ground all the time I was Santiago either!

The last time I'd been in Santiago, in '08, I hadn't even known there was a roof top tour.    The tour is currently running at 8 Euros, and is worth every bit of it.  I had the good fortune to get to share my experience with Hunter a terrific young man, a great pilgrim, from Florida.  We'd met on the trail a while back and bumped into each other again, as pilgrims do, in Santiago.  We both enjoy church architecture and art, so sharing it with him was great.

The our actual tour began a 7:00pm with a flight of ancient stairs.   We nearly had to run up those stairs, because I was late! One wrong turn while trying to shop for family and I ended up several blocks over from where I shoulda been.  Not an auspiscious beginning for a tour with lots and lots of stairs.  That however turned out to be the only off moment!

The guide took us up to one of the rooms of the Cathedral Museum, and showed us what would have been a banquet room and gave wonderful explanations of the various carvings and colors that would have filled the room.  Even ceilings weren't left alone.  There is a whole other language being used, a kind of shorthand, that many of us are unaware of these days.  Just as we speak in sometimes unintelligible shorthand while texting, in a way so did the builders and artists who made the cathedral and surrounding buildings.  We may use the phrase IMHO (In my humble opinion!) or LOL (laughing out loud).  When these buildings were being mapped out, you might have been told your "place" in someone's humble opinion by a simple glance around you.  Look up and see plain and few ornaments in your little part of the universe and you didn't need to wonder where you fitted into the larger picture. Then all of this would have been painted too.  While our current sensibilities are accustomed to the tans, taupes, grays and browns, in their time much of the rooms as well as the cathedral proper would have been beautifully painted.  Add then banners of all sorts, tapestries and the rich colored robes and the place would have been a riot of color.  So very different from what we see today, cool and calm and monochromatic.

From these rooms our guide, Andy, took us up yet another flight of steps which brought us to the gallery in the Cathedral itself.  Amazing things to be seen and discovered here, many completely unexpected.  In it's hey day this gallery running around the cathedral would have been where pilgrims spent the night.  All of a sudden the botafumeri clearly is much more than a show stopping ornamental incense burner.  It's essentially a giant room deodorizer!

This pic was taken in '08

Look at the thickness of those ropes!!

Can you imagine waking up in the morning...looking down and seeing this in the cool light of dawn!

Here we also got an incredible up close view of what was once a rose window in the original facade of the cathedral. So sad, at least to me, to see what was once someones beautiful masterpiece pushed aside by a change in fashion.  But that still goes on today, doesn't it, out with the old and in with the new?

This area is off limits unless your on the tour, or one of the lucky people who are working on restorations up here.  This is also turns out to be the attic area of the cathedral.

Imagine this as your workspace!!  Ahh one can dream!

These giant figures are used during feistas! We were told the represent in a humorous
way pilgrims from around the world.

This is how it rests on the person carrying it!
Somehow it looks like the ultimate headache.

Now it was onward and upward to the roof itself.  I had no real idea what it might be like up there.  It was amazing.  The one and only complaint, was of myself, for being silly enough not to inquire about footwear.  I had my crocs on, which were ok, but my hiking shoes would have been much more secure.  Especially for someone who doesn't like heights all that much.

Andy our intrepid guide who patiently answered all our questions.

As you come out of the stair case this is the view that greets you straight ahead.  In clearer weather it must be unbelievable.  Although this cloud cover gave us nice even lighting.

Looking left this is what you'll see. It was funny to see how comfortable some people were up here.  Funnier still how uncomfortable some us were!

Get really brave and start wandering about anywhere...even the ridge line!

Looking down at the Plaza where I'd had a glass of champange
with Arlene the day before, celebrating our arrival in Santiago.

This curved door completely intriuged me.

Look around the city, heck look anywhere in Galicia and you'll see mosses, lichens, flowers and ferns popping out of crevices and clinging to walls.  While I found them beautiful to look at, they worried me.  I was concerned they might be causing damage to the buildings.  Andy our guide assured me that they don't.  In fact he said one of them and I'm not sure which color it was, actually acts in a protective manner for the stone face. You can see at least three colors of lichens, one moss, and two different flowers just on this one piece of ornamentation!

While looking at the building was fun...looking in was almost as much!  Being able to view parts of the great gilded altar from the roof top windows was amazing.  Someone needs to tell housekeeping they missed a spot!

Interesting and understandable, to see how the gold is only on the parts that show!

Ok...so I don't like doing windows either.

This tour was terrific and I truly recommend it to any and all going to Santiago!  But now it's time for a beer, a reward for climbing so high and getting clamy hands and feet!!   I'm off from there...humming me a little James Taylor.!!

Since my friends and family know how much I don't like heights...I had to have this picture taken up there as proof positive!  See I didn't just send my camera up with Hunter!

Homecoming

I first heard about the Camino at least 20 years ago.  There was an immediate deep visceral response.  I knew in every fiber of my being I wanted to do this thing, walk across the North of Spain.  This isn't a surprise if you really know me.  Or, it shouldn't be!

Growing up my first heroes/heroines were adventurers.  I remember getting lost reading an entire series of biographies in the elementary school library for young readers. Bios of people like Lief Erikson, Kit Carson, Lewis and Clark. My bedtime reads often included old (I mean 1915!) copies of National Geographic, often all black and white.  Someday, I will go to the Gobi Desert and be surprised that it doesn't smell like old books, that delicious dry, ever so slightly moldy dusty aroma of ancient paper. Ahhh... the dream of travel.

So, now I'm all grown up (lol) and been married for 33 years.  A lifetime!  Married to someone whose idea of vacations is a polar opposite.  Not wrong, just undeniably different.  It can be fun to go to the same shore spot year in and year out.  To see how things change. Or not.  Measuring yourself against things seen only once each year.  However, for someone whose earliest memories are airplanes, airports and autobahns, this can feel at times like an almost imperceptible dying, unless well seasoned with periodic adventures.

An amusing example of our differences is simply in the expectations of where people live after marriage.  His family all tried, at least initially to stay as close as possible.  Five miles was good.  Same neighborhood, even better.  Next county, well that was seriously pushing the envelope.   I pushed the envelope.  My envelope always was bigger to start with.  Thousands of miles bigger.  My childhood impressions of marriage were, you married and moved.  Far.  My maternal grandparents married in Germany and moved to England. My paternal great grandparents married in Germany, and moved to America.  And then back to Germany, to fulfill military obligations during the WW I.  My parents, my uncle and aunt either married and then moved to the US or vice versa.  So if you'd ever asked me as a youngster, what I thought would happen when I married, the answer would have been simple.  Marry and move to the west coast!  Finding myself living within a few miles of where I went to high school, essentially wedded (or is that welded?) to the state university via marriage to a tenured professor, is, well - a shock! 

Even something as benign or boring sounding, like visiting grandparents was a little different. I remember looks of pity when I told other kids I was going to my grandparents for vacation. I just neglected to mention they lived in another country.  On another continent.   I learned early on to fly alone to Germany. Then to negotiate the train from Frankfurt to Nurnberg and then finding my Opa at the Hauptbanhof.  Even at thirteen and fourteen. So traveling, even on my own has been in my blood and a habit for as long as I can remember.

So I've often felt a little out of sync.  It really began to hit me how much my version of travel and "normal" weren't, aren't exactly that.  There have been many times when I've expressed my interest in visiting places that don't show up on shiny travel brochures and gotten such strained smiles.  Comments like "that's not safe" or "we aren't that kind of people"  or "not a woman, certainly not alone...".  A kind of loneliness became normal.  Quiet.  I simply learned to be quiet.

That doesn't mean I gave up dreaming.  Plotting some might call it.  Watching, waiting, a little praying too.  Somehow I knew I couldn't possibly be the only one.  Oh, I knew I wasn't, but it sure felt that way sometimes. 

Then the Camino.  Here were people who quite literally stepped out of "normal" and into another way.  Men, women, young, old, people who weren't afraid to meet the world full on.  To live in ways, many, at least here in the US couldn't (or perhaps I should say wouldn't) conceive of doing. 

Finally, I found home or could I say I found my tribal lands. We are tribe of nomads on the Camino.  For more than five weeks I slept in a different bed nearly every single night. Most of the time, I and my compadres on the road, weren't even sure where we might be sleeping for the night. I ate in different towns, with different people.  Yet in it's own lovely way it finally felt, well, like a home.  Even now, more than two months out, I find a comfort, knowing there are pilgrims out there.  On the road.  Pilgrims who will pick up in a few hours and walk forward.  Where to exactly doesn't matter.  Exactly with whom doesn't matter.  They will get to know still more people.  Tomorrow, on the road.  The tribe will continue.

I'm beginning to realize too,  how many other pilgrims moved with me when I was on the road. Other pilgrims were invested in me and my pilgrimage, without ever meeting.  Every day in Santiago at Mass, prayers of thanksgiving are said for those at the cathedral.  And prayers are said for those still on their way. How many pilgrims at home, were remembering, as I do now, their days on the road and pray for those currently walking.  How many pilgrims, lurk on Internet forums and wonder about those walking.  Wonder will it would be like?  And perhaps pray for those walking.  How many of us say prayers of thanksgiving for advice we've received from those who walked before us and shared their knowledge.  How many feet have trodden those routes over the years?

I almost wonder how much of the dust we breathe in on that road is partly dust of those who've gone before us, the dust of our pilgrim tribe.  Perhaps in a way that was part of what I smelled, all those years ago in my attic bedroom.  Reading my ancient National Geographics under the covers with bedside lamps or flashlights or however I could manage it on that night.  My nose already knew, the familiar smell of the dust of the road.  The smell of homecoming.

** Monastery Bells **

Well, sort of!  This poem was shared by a friend and I think of it every time I look at this picture, which is now my wallpaper on the computer.

The temple bell stopped

but the sound kept coming

from the flowers

- Matsuo Basho, 17th century Japanese Zen-Haiku poet  

** The Road Not Taken **

My first thought as I came to this particular intersection as of Frost...and the road not taken...So I thought I 'd share them together with you...

---

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

What the heck...is **

Ok in an effort to make things manageable for those who are interested...as well as myself in editing...any entries with the apparent cursing going on, ** are new entries with pics and captions only! Hope this is helpful.  Looks like only a day or a two at time.  The upload process ain't exactly greased lightening. Oh that's right a pilgrim is always grateful...but then I ain't in pilg mode anymore... I am home!!  (insert evil witchy laugh here!)

Pictures...at last!

Ok....have begun inserting pics in the chronologically appropriate places...but not 100% sure if this is a good idea...or should I just start a second section of pics...in order?  Will take advice or opinions from one and all....no offense taken...just excited as all get out to be able to share them with you all at last. 

Ahhhh...that's right..breathe, just breathe!