So that's where pesto genovese comes from!

We spent a day and a half in Rome, a drastically insufficient amount of time to hope to get the feel of the historic city. Having both been there before we decided on a short visit to allow more time checking out other, stranger locales. We strolled the city streets, stumbling upon famous ancient structures and beautiful art and architecture. We lingered at the Trevi Fountain with ten thousand other people and caught unexpected glimpses of the Colosseum down side streets. We hoped to find some decent food for dinner but fell into the trap of a tourist restaurant (first language on the menu: English; we should have known) and after some very mediocre pasta made a pact to only eat in restaurants where Italian was being spoken by the customers. The Lonely Planet guide led us to a superb restaurant the following night, worth an hours wait outside.

We queued for the Vatican museums and found that they contained many many beautiful works of art, most of which we could see easily despite the thousands of other tourists flouting the no flash photography rule (they were, not us; I think I forgot the camera again). The Vatican obviously has an ambivalent attitude to modern art, having awkwardly crammed their 20th century collection between the magnificent Raphael rooms and the Sistine Chapel, so that already exhausted visitors simply rushed through this area. There was some lovely stuff in there but I was afflicted with the rushing virus and will have to visit again (yes, along with the countless other amazing sights and sites that I have rushed by already). The Sistine Chapel was certainly amazing but perhaps too full? Of art, not people, although it was extremely full of people as well. Perhaps this fabled place couldn't live up to expectations because we already knew it was...well, fabled. Having ticked that box we strolled some more before finding the aforementioned restaurant and all was well.

The following day we caught a train to Genoa, home of a friend of Mel's with whom we would be staying for a few days. About half an hour before our scheduled arrival the train stopped and announcements were made in Italian. Our compartment colleagues translated, there was a delay. The delay lasted some time, so much time in fact that people started getting off. We were not near a platform as far as we knew, but a huge number of people went past our rearward position on their way off the train, chattering excitedly. Our compartment colleagues discussed the situation with other passengers and gave us the story: there had been an accident on the tracks and a woman had passed away, so the train would not be moving for some time. Buses had apparently been arranged ("arranged" having a slightly different and less arranged definition in Italian) and everyone was getting off here. We gathered our bags and filed back with the last of the passengers, alighting from the rear end of the train onto the end of a platform at one of Genoa's minor stations. Contrary to our assumptions the woman had not died up the line. She had been hit by our train, and there she was, about 40 yards back, about five yards from the stairwell we were to take to the exit, covered clumsily with a white sheet of plastic. It was hard to look and hard not to, but one horrible detail drew my eye: from an uncovered mangled shoe protruded a foot, an appalling unnatural orange colour. People were standing around, not all obviously officials, and we all just filed off and walked past her, most grumbling about the delay. Couldn't something more have been done to protect this woman's dignity? Did we pay her enough respect? Any respect?

We made it safely into the care of Mel's friend, who was required to stay with another friend who had been having some health problems and wanted company while her husband was away. Thus we had the run of a one bedroom apartment in a picture postcard location on the Genoan coast. This last comment is literal, the building being clearly visible on one of Genoa's most common postcards, an image that takes in the best of Italy: a beach, a coffee shop, and a gelati bar. No further comment is required to describe our mornings and evenings in Genoa. In between this sloth and avarice we strolled through the slinky little streets of the old city of Genoa and between the gorgeous cliff-edge towns of the Cinque Terre. And sometimes we did nothing and just enjoyed not being in a hotel room. I dragged Mel's friends and some others to a bar to watch the disastrous Australia vs Germany World Cup match and spent another (much more enjoyable) evening watching Spain vs Paraguay projected onto a wall on the roof of an apartment building. We left Genoa rested and ready for the final frantic sight-hopping stage of our trip.

The first sight was: beautiful Venice. I had been there before but Mel had not, and we slipped deliciously into two days of languid strolling and turning to each other excitedly as some other cute canal or gorgeous building appeared before our eyes. We were only allowed without paying into the lower section of the magnificent Basilica de San Marco and I mentally agreed with an old English lady outside who complained loudly to her friend "shame, pretty soon you'll have to pay for the whole lot of it, it was free last time I was here". I don't think we had anything else in common. We checked out the Gallerie d'Academia and concluded that it is dire need of a renovation, and also enjoyed the Peggy Guggenheim museum. The latter was in a lovely part of the city, lovely because it was the only place where hardly anyone else was. Having said that, Venice is still superb even with every tourist currently on the continent visiting at once. For the second time, I didn't take a gondola ride. This terribly unromantic omission was endorsed by Mel, and we resolved to spend that 80€ on a Melbourne Football Club membership or something else mutually rewarding. By the time we left we had already spent a fair whack of it on Aperol spritzers.

From Venice we boarded an overnight train to Linz, Austria, home of a former school friend of mine. Our carriage was administered by a nervous Austrian who spoke quite good English but understood none. He was not suited to his position, being slightly socially awkward and timid but massively over-compensating for this when wielding his authority by speaking very loudly and aggressively. His exchange with the American who shared our compartment was pretty amusing (American: do you need to take my Eurail pass as well as my ticket?; Conductor: YES! I MUST HAVE IT! I WILL GIVE IT BACK IN THE MORNING!!!!!!; American: silent, dumbstruck and cowed, whispering complaimts to his wife long after the conductor has left). After this minor entertainment I thought it appropriate to close our door and insert ear plugs upon hearing the following exchange shouted through the corridor in American accents:
Someone (presumably to someone quite close by): Did you see those orange drinks everyone was having? Spritz or something?
Unsolicited voice from far away: OH.MY.GOD! DID YOU TRY THAT!? WORST.DRINK.EVER!!!
Me: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Adios Espana

After our cynical homage to St James we headed for San Sebastian, to the north east. An 11 hour train ride delivered us to the beach, arriving at 8pm-ish and thus having at least two more hours of daylight in which to "make some party" as our otherwise perfect English speaking hostess put it. San Sebastian is an excellent place to make party, in which you elbow your way through a crowded bar and order various little deliciosas called pintxos and drink beer or the local sweet and slightly fizzy wine called txakoli. This is mostly excellent fun, the occasional burst of loud and unsolicited accordion music right behind you notwithstanding. In this way our three evenings there passed most enjoyably.

San Sebastian is pretty, a pretty town set on a pretty curve of beach with good looking people everywhere. Men wear white or green or purple trousers and designer shirts, almost always with a jumper tied around their necks. Many women go topless on the beach but as they step off the sand they seem to walk through an invisible beam that dresses them in smart but conservative attire and applies all the necessary jewellry and hair styling. No one was seen on the streets in any sort of beach wear or with their appearance otherwise notifying the viewer that they had been on the beach. Except for us. We climbed a pleasant hill on one end of the beach to take in panoramic views of the city and almost crashed a wedding at the top, before being forced into the free museum by an attendant saying "solo quince minutos, vista, vista", and he was right, the vista was lovely from the top deck. We took a day trip to Bilbao to see the Guggenheim and thought about and ate pintxos a lot. On our last night we visited a recommended pintxos bar whose menu angled towards the molecular gastronomy so celebrated in Spain: foams, "coffee" flavoured with ham, wafers, etc. It was exceptional! We ate too much and chatted to an American-Morroccan couple who had been in the wine region of La Rioja just prior. That sounded pretty good, so we resolved to strike out for the town of Laguardia the following day.

We hired a car and Mel was saddled with the driving duties as the only one with an international license. The car was a manual, which was a medium-sized problem, we had no map of San Sebastian (only a small problem), and she'd never driven on the right side of the road in a left-hand-drive car before (two more small problems). Together these problems added up to a very stressful first half an hour in the car. We obtained a Spanish touring map and drove off, immediately going through a red light with pedestrians leaping backwards and yanking their tiny dogs with them. After initially missing the required exit we made it on to the autovia, where all other drivers either merely ignore all the signed speed limits or are so baffled by the unbelievable multitude of signs beside Spanish roads that they just do whatever they want in protest. Indication for lane changes was non-existent and lingering in the left lane without significantly exceeding the speed limit was an offence quickly punished with aggressive beeping.

Thankfully we found our way to the quieter coastal roads where we were rewarded with superb ocean views as we cruised through fishing hamlets. We stopped in at Guernica, site of an horrific German bombing during the Spanish civil war, admiring the pretty town but finding the museum closed, it being a Monday. We rolled on through mountainous regions, Mel by now confidently slipping through the gears as we climbed and descended (if not always releasing the hand brake before taking off), and arrived in Laguardia early in the evening. Laguardia lies in Rioja Alavesa, a magnificently picturesque valley edged by craggy peaks and completely full of grape vines, mostly tempranillo, and beautiful villages. The town (walled, but too small to be called a citadel; a village-adel?) is perched on a rise and completely off limits to cars. I was constantly lost walking the tiny winding streets, even though there are only about five of them. The buildings lie on top of a network of cellars, originally built to store arms but later being found to be an excellent place to make wine. We stayed in a flash hotel recommended by our friends in the bar the night before, owned by a charming older gentleman named Javier, who was kind enough to pre-arrange some visits to wineries for us. Whenever we asked Javier for anything he began his reply by saying "es posible", which always suggested to me that we were working to overcome some enormous obstacle, rather than just ordering a plate of ham and cheese croquettes.

We toured a cellar winery under the town, taking tastings straight from the vats, and then a much bigger winery in a nearby village with flash buildings designed by Frank Gehry of Bilbao Guggenheim fame. We paid 10€ for a tour of the latter concern and had to sit through some propaganda videos ("Marquis de Riscal has been at the forefront of La Rioja wine production for blah blah years and our commitment to quality and blah di blah is unstinting" etc etc) before touring the enormous and impressive facilities. They then had the gall to produce a cheap white from a whole other region during the tasting before finally allowing us each a thimble full of their Reserva and bundling us into the gift shop. Onto the black list.

With one more night before we were due to return the car to Madrid we resolved to explore another wine region (Ribera del Duero) to the south west, and like a man I decided I could guide us there with minimal prior research. We found the region alright, driving into the main town in the early evening. After an annoying and then infuriating and finally desperate search for a car park we galloped through town and arrived at the tourist office five minutes after closing time. I kicked the door and we fled the town, whose name momentarily escapes me, and which was ugly and industrial anyway. I just chose a decent sized town off the road map and thus we ended up in inauspicious Roa, a town with one hotel and, extraordinarily, only one restaurant with a suitable menu del dia. We had a very quiet time there.

The next day we found the picturesque town of Penafiel only 20 minutes drive away, surrounded by and filled with lovely looking hotels and restaurants. We (I) had chosen the wrong town to stop in. It was too late to arrange any visits to wineries, so we settled for a lunch at a vineyard. We ate lechazo, the local specialty, a roast lamb dish strictly made from unweaned lambs whose quality and provenance are assurred by an official body. The leg of lamb had a little note stuck on it assurring us of it's authenticity, just as an origin controlled wine would have. It was superb if ethically dubious. With that we headed back to Madrid, Mel taking on the freeway and winning, although she had to wrestle the little Seat over the hills. The spaghetti of freeways around Madrid and the airport (where the car was to be dropped off) looked intimidating on the map but was actually signposted very well, albeit in the Spanish "I don't care what order it is in, just get the informatiom on there" style. We travelled back in to the city by train just in time for some shoe shopping and mojitos, the latter necessary to redeem my boredom over the former, and also to calm Mel's excitement over her purchases. A few more tapas and drinks and we were in bed, asleep for the last time in Spain, dreaming of Rome and then conveniently flying there the next morning.

Taking in the Goog (coarse language)

Right, the Bilbao Guggenheim, modern art, I guess we won't be seeing too many "Adoration of the Magi"'s or "David with the head of Goliath"'s here. Bloody hell, how do you think up a building like that? "Inspired by the shapes of fish and boats" the brochure says, it's like a shiny pile of mangled boxes and tin cans. There's a giant puppy made of flowers out the front, that's pretty cool. Don't think I'll bother with the audio tour this time, oh it's included in the price is it, I'll have one then. 13€! Christ that's stiff. Right, in we go, what's this in the entry room, five thin columns scrolling words in LED lights, in red in English on one side and in blue and Basque on the other, it casts a nice light, yeah, this is pretty cool, not sure what it appeals to in me but I like it! Room one then, there's a Rothko over there but I'm not looking at that yet, here is a painting with a cream background about three quarters covered by jagged brown with a rough red line down the left and a splash of blue over there too. A child could have painted this. The brown "seems to quiver" does it audio guide lady? No it doesn't, it doesn't do anything except baffle me, on to the Rothko, a white rectangle on a yellow rectangle on a red rectangle, what a fucking fraud this bloke is, a cheat, "floating rectangles" my arse, how did he ever get any attention? Some critic must have been bored and decided to see just how much power he had, things better improve here or I'm going to miss that 13€. On to a canvas covered in black with a small patch of white down the lower left, I can't quite hear all the audio guide comments through he white noise of my rage and embarrassment but I think the "courage " of the artist is mentioned, yes, it is certainly courageous to produce this and expect to be taken seriously, moving on very quickly now. Another room, here's something I can get behind, a space scene with mangled metal and a part of an American flag, with added mirrored fabric at each end so you can look at a warped reflection of the picture from the side, why on earth do I like this? Here's Warhol, "150 multicoloured Marilyns", you have to hand it to the bloke for getting so much mileage out of one trick, he's a fraud too but he's being honest about it. Robert Rauschenburg's Barge, this is good, again if only because it has some identifiable images in it, maybe that's what I need, just one element I understand, this has plenty, pictures of football players and modes of transport and birds pasted on with fairly random black and white paint, okay. Next is "nine cycles of..." something or other, basically the same destructive looking painting nine times: a cream background, a grid and two bursts of pinky reddy violent stuff, I don't mind this either, it's got moods as you walk along it, up and down, like mine in this gallery. Yves Klein is next, so is is where that band gets its name, Yves Klein Blue! The audio guide says this was painted using Klein's "human brush" technique, where he has naked woman covered in paint roll around on a canvas. Ummmm, should we be commending this perversion? Why not get people of both genders to roll around in the paint, why not roll around yourself, yes yes, he wanted some distance from the work, but this just sounds like an excuse to have someone else do it, and why not naked women? Why not clothed women? It's just pure arse that this canvas ended up with a leaping figure shape in the middle, nice painting actually, but maybe the naked woman's name should be on it?! Perhaps Klein's perversion is the point? Richard Serra's "Matter of Time" now, a long room full of installations you can walk through, spirals and ellipses with the walls closing in and fanning out, walking around this is making me dizzy and fearfulandthen Iget to the centre and can breathe again, the artist's commentary is good too, describing the shapespretty matter of factlyand not crapping on about his message, whatever that is. All the different shapes sound pretty complicated, cambered ellipses and so forth, he must have been thinking about it for a loooong time, if nothing else it's disconcerting, is that enough? Mixed going so far and I fear that Anish Kapoor upstairs isn't going to make things any easier, need lunch first, what? We have to leave the museum and hand in our guide to get to the cafe, Frank Gehry can get this outrageous building up but a conveniently placed cafe is beyond him, down the block for some pintxos, good view back to the museum with a wholly mundane street transformed at the end by the fish scale buildings and the giant flower puppy. Check out these outdoor works, a 12 foot tall jagged metal spider with a pouch underneath containing realistic looking eggs, better step back or be showered by newborn steel spiders, a bunch of colourful steel tulips, oh, they're balloons are they Mel, ha! It's called Tulips! A little Anish Kapoor taster, a column of silver balls, all reflecting the museum and river and each other in different ways, very cool and very susceptible to multiple photographs. Back in and up to Anish's floor, wish I could ditch the audioguide but definitely need it here. Room one has unusal sculptures in bright pigments, and a lump protruding from the wall like a pregnant belly that you can only see from the side, that's extraordinary, it vanishes when you're front on, Anish's commentary is no-nonsense too, good start, into the second room, numerous sculptures made of tubes of concrete, apparently all made using a machine that spews out the concrete based on architectural information provided by a computer, Anish himself is not even sure what this says, but I like it, don't know why, perhaps just for the effort it has taken to build them and get them in here. On we go, here are some oddly bent mirrors, in this one you are the right way up when close to it but as you walk backwards you seem to explode and them reassemble inverted, here is another long curved one, as you walk along it you appear to stay in the same spot while the room moves, again, impenetrable but somehow cool. Finally we're into the room where a cannon fires huge cylinders of wax into the corner, there's a terrible red sloppy mess there, here comes the bloke to set it off, better video this, shit, haven't got much time left on the memory card, will have to wait until the last possible moment, when will I know when it's going to fire, gas is moving, it's charging up, now, no, now? Click record, it's gone off, I missed seeing it because I was preoccupied with the camera, but FUCK! I've missed it on the camera as well, that's fucking brilliant that is, will they fire it again later? Bloody camera, stops you from actually looking at anything. Next, Robert Rauschenburg's Gluts, sculptures made of metal salvaged by the artist from dumps, not much to see here folks, he is commended in the audio guide for not having really done anything except rivet the random pieces of metal together and give them clever names, receiving acclaim for doing nothing, that's a nice trick, here's one with a working fairground scrolling light, that's okay, stick to semi-painted collages Rob. Finally, Henri Rousseau, here's a woman taking a walk but something else is happening, something sinister or uncertain, amazing when you just get the feeling instantaneously when looking at the piece, here are some jungle ones, he never saw a jungle eh audio guide, well, one can tell that just by looking at his jungle pictures, had he seen a jungle these would surely attract grave criticism. A couple of times the audio guide has mentioned how the figures in his paintings "appear to float" (she's right this time, unlike when referring to Rothko's rectangles), but this seems likely to be simply because Rousseau's home made technique is not good enough to paint a figure that actually appears to be standing on a surface. Here is "The Football Players", it's splendidly energetic, they're all floating, and that's Rousseau himself in the foreground eh audio lady? Well, that must be him in the background too because all the men pictured look exactly alike. That's that I guess, time to go home, relief and confusion, 13€ worth?! As we walk off we turn and look back, if there is to be a prize for best piece of art seen today the building wins (although that cannon was pretty fucking cool).

Estamos peregrinos!

And so!  We joined the great pilgrimage, traditionally starting in Roncesvalles in France and stretching across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela, the site of the burial of St James the Apostle, whose remains were found there around the 9th or 10th centuries after a hermit saw some lights in the sky and led the local bishop to the gravesite.  St James' remains were only of mild (and secular) interest to us, and I could probably fill a whole blog entry speculating on our motivations for following this path, so lets just settle on that we lobbed in Leon and everyone else is doing it but it's too far to walk so how about we ride?

We hired bikes from a Santiago-based mob who sent them to Leon for us.  Obstacle  one: the bikes were delivered to a very inconveniently located satellite town to the south.  We carried our load down there, packed what we needed in the panniers and sent the remainder of our luggage to Santiago by courier.  Our map showed a shortcut from the suburb to the trail but as we approached a freeway entrance we thought better of it and had to go all the way back to Leon.  With only six days before the bikes were due back my mood was pretty dark when we were still in Leon at 12:30pm.  Once on the road the going was easy, with the path well sign-posted and many other pilgrims all along it, mostly on foot.  We lunched in a littel town called Villadangos del Paramo and continued on to our first destination, the city of Astorga, arriving after making our first mistake in choosing the unsealed path over the road for the final few hilly kilometres. We would learn to take the easy way when possible.

The pilgrims (peregrinos) are mostly very supportive of each other and shout a cheerful "buen camino" to each other when crossing paths.  There are so many that there are towns on the route whose existence depends entirely on the pilgrims, and  so the locals are to a man friendly and happy to see you.  We were greeted with "buen camino"'s and other phrases of encouragement at various points by a lady on a bike with a load of flowers, a little girl on her front door step with her grandma, and just about every merchant we did business with on the way.  These short and always pleasant exchanges made this much more than a fitness or sightseeing expedition.    

It was pretty late in the day as we approached Astorga and our minor anxiety was heightened by the sound of crickets, creating a feeling that dusk was imminent even though we knew there were still three or four hours of daylight left.  Arriving in Astorga at 7:30pm we checked in to the local albergue after a few frustrating minutes trying to find the tourism office which of course closed at 7.  Each town on the route has one or more albergues, basically cheap hostels for pilgrims.  Many, many bunks are squeezed into big rooms and everyone just gets the next bed along as they arrive, as long as they show their "pilgrims credentials", a little passport that is stamped at each stop and proves you have made the pilgrimage that you are claiming to have made.  Mercifully, boots are left outside the dorms.  We got beds and strolled briefly around the town, which naturally has a beautiful cathedral and, next door, a palacio designed by the famous Antoni Gaudi.  This building's purpose is obscure and it may have been built solely because Astorga didn't have a Gaudi yet.

This day is otherwise notable for our consumption of two menus del dia.  Just about Every restaurant in Spain has a menu del dia, where the customer pays a very fair price and receives an entree, main, dessert and drink.  It's usually about 9-12€.  The customer is always served a gigantic amount of food and invariably finishes up feeling sick and uncomfortably full unless he or she has the discipline to refuse some part of it (she sometimes does, he doesn't).  For this reason we never really want to order it but because it is nearly always cheaper than three small plates, and we know that two small plates won't be enough, some tight-arsed, "maybe I might never get another meal" instinct prevails and the enormous primero plato arrives and we look at each other like "we ordered it again!?".  Anyway, as foreshadowed above on this first day of riding we each consumed entire menus del dia for both lunch and dinner, an unheard of and massively guilt-inducing level of consumption.  Hopefully clean toilets would be closely spaced along the second day's route.

Day two was a nightmare.  Our camino guide included small altitude maps of the stages and it was clear that there was some climbing to do.  The morning was straight forward, a mildly uphill run to the town of Rabanal del Camino, the only problem being a little bit of walker vs cyclist rivalry pushing us off the path and onto the nearby road.  After morning tea at Rabanal we commenced a steep climb up to the town of Foncebadon and over to El Acebo.  This is where we discovered that riding in mountains is difficult.  Actually, more specifically what we discovered was that riding in mountains into the wind on luggage packed bikes was damn near impossible, and only stupidity and arrogance would allow two smart arses with four months of holiday and eating out hanging around their waists to even attempt it.  We struggled up the mountain agonisingly slowly, being effortlessly overtaken by other cyclists (how on earth we were in front of them in the first place is a genuine mystery), stopping every 100 yards or so to gasp and gulp water, reaching the top genuinely shattered and rolling exhausted down into El Acebo for lunch.  It took more than two hours to cover about six kms.  Upon arriving in this town we were approached by an elderly cyclist, who despite our "no hablo espanol"'s and "no entiendo"'s spoke rapidly to us in Spanish, apparently explaining that he was 80 years old and had ascended the same mountain in one hour.  I fought off an urge to push his head under the water in a nearby trough.

We lingered over a superb menu del dia and then rolled down the hill to Ponferrada.  Far from improve our moods, if anything this descent deepened our depression because we could see that this city had hills all around.  Looking at our altitude maps closely revealed the worst: the next day contained a much steeper and longer climb, rising 700 metres in only seven kilometres (incline 10%, for those that know about such things; I had to look it up on the internet).  That night we gradually moved ourself with enormous psychological effort from despair and consideration of abandonment to cautious optimism and mutual encouragement.  However, that night we both slept restlessly and the first part of the next day's ride was clouded by worries of what lay ahead.  It was a lovely ride though: we followed the walking path through vineyards in the wine region of Bierzo and stopped for morning tea in Villafranca del Bierzo, a beautiful little hill town with a small castle and slim winding streets.  The road continued on through the valley of the Valcarce River, and we began to remember why we were taking this trip in the first place.  We lunched in Vega de Valcarce where I walked hard into a low hanging part of an outdoor gazebo, an accident that would have cut my head open had my sunglasses not taken the blow.  My unconscious had failed in its attempt to avoid the climb.

As it turned out, we walked up the bastard.  It was just too steep.  Some parts were negotiable with considerable effort but as soon as the slope increased the legs screamed, the lowest gear was engaged and we stepped off the bike just in time to avoid toppling over or rolling backwards.  Two thirds of the way up we had an ice cream in La Laguna de Castilla before walking some more to reach the autonomous region of Galicia and the hilltop town of O Cebreiro.  This is a beautiful tiny village, perched in one of those magnificent spots where a person can see panoramic views of the ground they have just covered and turn around and see the next gorgeous valleys ahead of them.  It was also crawling with tourists in buses and every bed in town was taken.  Onward then!  Another eight or nine kms of ups and downs and we arrived at Alto do Poio where we paid for a private room and sat still for several hours.  There was an extensive menu posted outside the door of our hotel but this proved to be a complete red herring; upon sitting down to dinner we were immediately served soup without recourse to a menu, followed by fish and chips handed out by a gruff waiter with an air of "you're bloody lucky to get that too".  I wanted to ask him "What would St James say about your attitude?" but I didn't because I know what St James would say: "eat as much as you can, you've still got 150kms to go".

The rest of the ride was a comparative picnic, and broke out into an actual picnic on a couple of occasions.  We rolled 14 kms down from Alto do Poio to Triacastela in about 25 minutes, descending through a mist that from above looked like a white sea with the tops of mountains peeking out like islands.  Some of these were covered in wind turbines looking like marooned sailors waiting for rescue.  Once down in the mist the gloom and the crickets combined to make 9:30am seem like 9:30pm, and no amount of intellectual effort could shake the disconcerting feeling.  We effortlessly continued down to the major town of Sarria.  This is the last town from whence a pilgrim can set out and cover enough kms to achieve the Compostela, a certificate awarded in Santiago if one ticks all the boxes.  Suddenly we were surrounded by boisterous groups of pilgrims with brand new walking sticks and their luggage travelling behind them in cars.  They pushed into lines and chattered excitedly and paid no heed to any "genuine pilgrim" hierarchy that I thought might exist.  The effect was negative for lovers of bed rest: we arrived at Portomarin at about 1:30pm and were among the last five or ten to get beds at the 200 bed albergue, having established while we anxiously waited in line that every other hotel in the town was booked out.  While we sat around in cafes all afternoon toasting our luck we observed walkers and riders cruising into town looking for a well earned rest and then cruising straight back out of town again looking perplexed and anxious.  Many looked considerably more frail than me but I couldn't quite bring myself to relinquish my bed.

We called many hotels in the towns ahead but all were full for the next night, so we would just have to take our chances with the albergues again.  After another fairly easy ride we arrived early enough and on the fifth night we stayed in a beautiful albergue converted from an original pilgrims hospital in a riverside village called Ribadiso.  This was full of French people who were somehow able to speak simultaneously to each other all afternoon and then from 5:30am the next morning.  A Spanish woman bedded near to us declared them "loco".  The one cafe in town conducted thriving pilgrim-only business despite their spaghetti bolognese looking absoutely ghastly.

We had booked accommodation well ahead in Santiago and so were able to enjoy our final day of riding free from anxiety re: sleeping rough.  We were excited to finish and wondered about how it must feel for a devout pilgrim who has been walking for more than a month to finally arrive at the fabled cathedral.  The city was full of pilgrims and busloads of tourists who poured in and out of the cathedral in huge numbers, compelling us to quickly flee to our hotel room after the obligatory photos.  It is a lovely cathedral whose spires dominate the town, as most major religious buildings do in the parts of Spain we have seen.  We stopped at the pilgrims' centre to get our Compostelas and as I completed the form I noticed that I was the only pilgrim on the page to tick the "non-religious" box under "reasons for pilgrimage".  The attendant was quite put out, having already written "Samuelen Lloyd" on the religious certificate, and grilled me in such a way as to suggest he expected me to say "sorry, yes, I forgot I was religious".  He then tore up the first certificate but managed to spell my name correctly on the much lamer non-religious certificate (general tone of certificate text: "you rode a bike to Santiago, good on ya").     

At lunch we celebrated by eating our first excellent paella, two weeks into our Spanish visit.  After, we lined up for a glimpse of St James' crypt, where I struck up a conversation with a woman next to us in the line.  She was thrilled to see us and said "It's so wonderful to see young people so devoted, you know they say faith is dying, it's not, it's stronger than ever".  We shuffled our feet for a moment before I deftly turned the topic of conversation to the paella.  She was an absolute non-listener anyway, on a multi-stop religious tour of Spain and Portugal and too excited by her proximity to the Apostle to bother waiting for someone else to finish a sentence before telling them about another place that they "must" go to because the Virgin appeared there in a plate of jamon or something.  Inside, she and her friends were seriously excited, and we almost missed the tomb for watching them whisper reverently and touch every idol in sight.  We glanced at the bejewelled coffin and headed out again.  I was a little confused by the fuss but also strangely envious, not really understanding what it was that others in the line felt so connected to while also thinking, actually, kind of knowing in a snobby way, that whatever it is is absurd and worthy of  derision.  I'll end this metaphysical debate now to avoid making this blog entry even longer and revealing too much about the more uppity elements of my nature.

We returned the bikes and consumed alcohol like people who don't have to ride anywhere the following day.  We ate the local octopus dish and found this a small step too far in embracing the local culture.  What does a pilgrim do when he's not a pilgrim anymore?  Takes advantage of his pilgrim train discount and heads to the beach, that's what.                              

What is the collective noun for walled cities?

From Avila we headed to Segovia, in many ways a very similar place but with a slightly slicker tourism strategy and a 300 yard Roman aqueduct, standing about 30 metres high and looking like it was knocked up yesterday. The lifting of the huge stones must have required some pretty fancy machinery by first century standards and apparently no mortar was used. Aside from our admiration, this edifice also attracted a barrage of Life of Brian quotes ("what have the fuckin' Romans done for us lately anyway?"; "half a dinari for an old ex-leper sah!"; and on to "I have a vewy gweat fwiend in Wome, called Biggus Dickus"). Mel endured this with only slightly gritted teeth.

Segovia also has a magnificent cathedral and a fairy tale castle perched dramatically on it's north-western corner. The audio tour for this latter structure was a dry affair, noting in great detail the "mudejar-style" architecture in just about every room, particularly above the doorways, while also describing how the old castle burned down in the 19th century and the current one is now covered largely by rooves stolen from nearby churches. What the locals worshipping on a rainy Sunday think of that cannot be printed here. Despite the efforts of the excellent English speaker on the guide, I cannot describe mudejar style architecture beyond saying it's name. The cathedral is superb, I suspect even to cathedral afficianados, dominating the town skyline and sitting close to the main square and numerous tapas bars, allowing for a swift transition between religions.

From Segovia we took a very fast train to Leon, a bigger city but with a medieval centre and, yes, some old city walls. This is one of the stops on the French Road of the Camino de Santiago, the path from France to Santiago de Compostela in north western Spain taken by thousands of pilgrims each year to visit the cathedral where St James the Apostle is thought to be buried. We hoped to walk or cycle some of this route and so the sights of Leon took a back seat to frantic organising and frustrating attempts to negotiate bike rental and luggage transport and accommodation in Spanglish over the frequently faulty pay phones. After several tantrums, incidents of phone vandalism and near-hurlings of our iPad into lakes we got it all sorted and could stroll the streets without worry. We were right to change our pace; the city walls are old and nice and I'm sure the stones could tell stories if they could speak but they can't and how many city walls can a bloke look at? The cathedral was, as always, partly covered by scaffolding and requesting donations for renovation but it was extremely rich in beautiful stained glass and there was much conjecture over whether it was "better" than the Segovia cathedral. You can vote on this at www.youcan'trankthiskindofthingyouknow.com.

Once all the bicycling was organised we could finally stroll around and enjoy Leon's atmosphere. We dined on morcilla and ensalada rusa at an old town bar, and ordered something called manitas de ministro, basically because we didn't know what it was and it was slightly higher priced than most other dishes, suggesting exoticism or at least some specialness. It turned out to be four bony and meaty chunks smothered in a red sauce. Our inital asumption was chicken, but doubt was cast by the tasting in which we found the meat to be surprisingly jelly-like. Mel was finally able to identify them as pigs trotters, and persuaded me with reference to the numerous hams hanging from the roof with the trotter still attached. Another dish that won't require a second try.

The next part of our trip was to be by bike, 300kms to Santiago de Compostela over six days. We had prepared for this task by doing no exercise for about two months and neither of us had ever ridden a bike with luggage panniers on it before. We didn't even have God on our side like the other pilgrims. Lucky we got that tantrum practice in.

Where is the, uh, the...generalissimo?

I have torn myself away from the hotel room TV, where a morbidly obese woman promises to read my fortune in Spanish for a small fee, to bring you this blog update on Madrid. A city of many domes. A city of many lovely parks. But mainly, a city preoccupied with football. Atletico Madrid played in the Copa Rey final against Seville while we were in town, losing 0-2, and afterwards shirtless lads were everywhere, apparently being ashamed to wear their jerseys. Two days after we headed north the city was to host the UEFA Champions League final, and the volume of advertising for this event was truly breathtaking. MasterCard were the major sponsor, with their tagline being translated from "Priceless" to "no tiene precio": "no it has price" (or, "it has no price" if you're not being a smart arse). At the time of writing the result of this match was unknown, but it is likely that the profits of all involved were ensured.

Madrid has many grand buildings but is apparently not actually that old, so these building are nice and everything but don't really exercise this viewer. They are also very clean, adding to the lack of grit, or character, or some other ethereal quality that I can't quite put my finger on. It is still a lovely place to stroll for a couple of days, and the aforementioned parks are genuinely lovely, decorated with grand royal mausoleums and inexplicable crystal palaces (just the one crystal palace actually). Drinking sherry and nibbling little serves of tasty stuff (blood sausage with cute little fried eggs, chorizo, salmon, jamon, manchego cheese) is another of the tremendously enjoyable activities open to the tourist in Madrid, and we fulfilled our roles in this tradition enthusiastically.

The highlights were the Museo del Prado and an evening spent at a flamenco bar. The Prado took up nearly a whole day and contained more than enough beauty to keep an ignoramus like me entertained for the whole time, despite wobbly legs. It tracked the development of Spanish art and focussed on the three big names of El Greco, Velasquez, and Goya, while perhaps showing a few too many portraits of King Felipe IV, who was obviously terribly vain and looks a right sour bastard. Thanks to Spain's past occupation of Belgium and the Netherlands it also houses a fantastic range of Flemish art. Stolen but beautiful.

The flamenco was in a bar/restaurant called Casa Patas, and though I whinged about the €31 cover charge beforehand I will never mention it again. The show was superb. Three singers and two guitarists performed a brief opening musical number before the two dancers come out to perform together, after which they each did a solo dance in between more singing and strumming. Strumming is a hopelessly inadequate word for what the guitarists were doing, and at times I thought I could hear this style of music's influence over more mainstream rock and pop. The singers sang incredibly high to my ear, but always in control and beautifully. They spasmed and twitched wildly as they sang; I wish I knew what they were singing about but just watching them was emotionally charged enough. The dancers performed alone for about 15 minutes each, and never seemed to be repeating moves and maintained a tremendous energy throughout. Their footwork on the (hopefully strongly reinforced) stage pushed Mel to comment that the quality of the dance could probably be accurately measured with a seismograph. One of the elements I enjoyed most was the intimate interaction between the players; all watched the others for cues but also seemed to enjoy the others' performances and shouted encouragement often, adding to the already engaging energy. The rest of the audience seemed to agree with us and the show ended to wild applause.

We headed north to the province of Castilla y Leon and specifically to the city of Avila, full of 12th to 18th century religious buildings and surrounded by a 30 metre high defensive wall made more charming by the hundreds of swallows constantly flying around it and disappearing into small holes in the sides. Larger birds nested on the tops of the church spires and bell towers, admirably enduring the loud and regular ringing of the bells. The ringing bells provided a pleasant soundtrack while we strolled through the quiet olde world streets.

One night we found ourselves in a tapas bar where we watched the UEFA Champions League final. The walls were lined with photographs of the proprietor with numerous matadors, along with other prints and shots on the bullfighting theme. We had watched some bullfighting on the TV in another bar and had not enjoyed it one bit. On the evening news another night we saw footage of a bull winning, quite horribly injuring the matador by goring him through the face. Bravo bull I say. Back in the Avila bar, the proprietor himself sat at the bar with a younger bloke handling the customer service. Trays of "deliciosos" lined the bar behind glass: prawns, clams, blood sausage, and other things that may or may not have been made of organs. We ate some tiny plates of octopus and tortilla. Some distinguished looking old fellas, some of whom could be recognized from the wall photos, came in to watch the football and yarn conspiratorially with the boys at work. One was served a single mussel on a potato chip as he sat down at the bar. The young guy behind the bar regularly adjusted the contents of the food trays with his bare hands and then blew his nose and wiped some remnants off his chin with the same hands. Internazionale FC (Milan) beat Bayern Munchen in the football, and although we were obviously cheering for Inter the barman asked us as we left if we were German. I grasped the opportunity: "Nein!", I replied. I actually only thought of saying that just now, but it would have been funny huh?

Cardiff in Welsh is Caerdydd

In the middle of our London visit we took a train to Cardiff to stay with a friend of mine, a dentist whose wish to work in diverse locales improbably took him to Alice Springs a few years ago, where we met. After we briefly recapped our famous victory in the Alice indoor soccer competition back in '06 he toured us around Cardiff's sites. This activity being completed within two hours we retired to a licensed premises. On the second day we slept in and then travelled to Big Pit, a former coal mine and now museum, arriving late after having an argument with the satellite navigation lady (she won, she's so infuriatingly assertive and sure of herself). Again connections were made between vague understandings: "Wales" and "mining" existed in my mind quite close to each other but without being explicitly connected until now. This was once the biggest coal exporter in the world. On the way in we saw an old photo of Margaret Thatcher holding a canary with some miners around her; some wag had drawn on a moustache on her that had been carefully but not quite completely subsequently erased. The earnest miner (a great enthusiast of the Welsh Cobb breed of horse; he admonished a school girl in our group who said she had one but didn't take it to jumping competitions, thus wasting it's great talent) that took us down the shaft for the tour told us that the two retired pet canaries upstairs were named Arthur and Maggie, but we weren't to say their surnames because they brought bad luck, their two namesakes having destroyed the British mining industry. He went on to say that all miners should get a day off "when she goes", and that he would be there, "singin' me lungs out".

After the enjoyable and informative tour of the shaft we took in the miners' showers (an unusual thing to tour I thought) and a museum. We headed off to walk up the tallest mountain in South Wales, just as a thick fog descended to obliterate what our host assured us was a lovely view. After taking some photos of the fog we descended and it began to lift. We retired to a licensed premises. I forced our party to stop in at a pub with karaoke, as well as carpet whose pattern had been obliterated everywhere but the very corners of the room and immediately around supportive pillars. Judging by the looks on their faces just being in this venue caused our local friends great pain but I hope my performance of "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" was worth it.

We left Wales for Bath in western England, where our London host was celebrating her 30th birthday at her parent's house. Because we were staying two nights we were given the best guest room in the house (in a house that sleeps 16 comfortably). It is to date the best room of the trip, with private bathroom and a view over a lovely green English valley, with a corner of Georgian Bath visible in the distance. The party was a triumph of complicated catering, and the presence of an Aga oven in the kitchen plunged me into sentimental reflection on my grandmother's former home, while also enabling me to curry favour with the host by asking her about her kitchen renovation. We played croquet on the lawn, which as an Australian I would have obviously won had I not had to be teamed up with English people. I further flew the flag by opening a beer just as everyone else went to bed, although this may have reversed my previous favoritism with the host.

The following day we took in the Roman Baths, a museum built over the site of the remains of a 1st and 2nd century Roman leisure centre, enjoyed lunch in a ye olde pub, and were ferried around the district by our host with a detailed tour of nearby towns and buildings of interest. We returned home where his mood was improved by England spanking Australia in the 20-20 World Cup Final, which he could have rubbed in more but was discouraged by my attitude of indifference, which was only slightly put on. We returned to London for one more night in a dreadfully overpriced hostel and lay awake wondering if we were going to be able to dodge British Airways strikes and Icelandic volcanic ash to get to Spain. We're sick of speaking English.