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When I’m in Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain, I always have three things planned. We watched the pilgrims reach their destination in front of the cathedral, explored the market, and bought barnacles in the seafood section, which they then cooked for us on the spot in the cafe.
I try to go to the town square facing the towering Cathedral of St. James around 11am. That’s when the weary throngs of pilgrims begin to gather for the daily pilgrimage mass. The Mass is a triumphant celebration of the completion of the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James), a 500-mile hike from the French border.
Since the Middle Ages, humble hikers have walked these miles to pay homage to the ruins of St. James in the eponymous city. Their traditional equipment included cloaks. Pointed floppy hat. walking stick. and a gourd (for drinking from the well). The path is marked with yellow arrows or scallops (symbols of saints) at each intersection. It takes approximately 4 to 6 weeks to walk the entire distance from the border to Santiago. I have never met a pilgrim who didn’t think this journey was a life-changing experience and worth the sweat.
At the end of the journey, hikers complete their pilgrimage by stepping on a metal scallop shell embedded in the sidewalk at the base of the cathedral. I love seeing how different pilgrims take the rapture.
Standing in front of the cathedral’s majestic façade is a hiker’s dream. Pilgrims always ask me to take pictures and email them to them. Then they say, “I have to go see St. James,” and head to the cathedral, as has been the custom for centuries.
Santiago is a city built of local granite. Most people imagine Spain as a hot, dry land, but the Atlantic side of northwestern Spain receives much more rainfall than inland (the northwestern corner of Spain is located an hour north of Santiago). (temperate rainforests). Rain from the Atlantic Ocean turns Santiago’s granite rocks green with moss.
Santiago’s public market, two blocks away from the cathedral, is thriving, oblivious to the personal triumphs happening at the Tomb of St. James. There’s something fundamental about strolling through a farmers’ market early in the morning, no matter where you are in the world. It’s about salt-of-the-earth people pulling food out of the ground, carting it into town, and selling their harvest to those who aren’t. I don’t have a garden.
Grandma’s dried apples are lined up like a grandma’s can-can. Each sits in a chair so small that it can be hidden under their work clothes. At the women’s feet, a brown woven basket is filled like a cornucopia, still containing dirty eggs. Secondly, this morning the greenery was clearly uprooted and the soil was clinging to the roots. A woman hopes to earn a few extra euros with her homemade beer (a golden bottle with a battered cork). One is labeled Rikor Café (coffee liqueur) and the other is labeled Oljo Casero (homemade grappa).
On a rickety card table, I see a piece of yellow cheese shaped like a giant Hershey’s Kiss. To the locals, it is shaped like a chest. This local cheese is called Tetilla, and was created seven centuries ago to take revenge on an unscrupulous priest who ordered the cathedral’s sculptor to remake a statue he considered too fat. From then on, the townspeople made cheese in a shape that the priest did not want to be seen carved into stone. You can’t go to Santiago without seeing the creamy, mild Tetilla.
As I venture deeper into the market, I notice spicy red chorizo, a sausage chained around a merchant’s face. Rubber-looking chickens with plucked feathers fill a glass case. Fishermen in rubber aprons and matching gloves sort the folded money.
The best food stalls are noisy. Short women in dusty blue plaid roller carts jostle for bargains. A mix of pig ears and stranded hooves fills the shoebox. The ears, translucent and neatly arranged in the low rays of the morning sun, look as if someone has systematically and neatly flattened a basket of conch shells.
One vendor buys persebe (barnacles) for a third of the price you would pay at a bar. I grabbed just under half a pound and hurried my bag to the market cafe. There, Ramon and Julia boil them for a small fee. Drink beer early in the morning, feel like a local, and wait eagerly for the barnacles to be cooked.
And then comes the climax of my morning. Julia brought me a pile of steaming barnacles on a stainless steel plate, some bread, and another beer. It’s ready. Twisting, tearing, biting. The bounty of the sea is condensed into every bite, making it a delight to eat in Santiago.
(Rick Steves (www.ricksteves.com) writes European guidebooks, hosts travel shows on public television and radio, and organizes tours of Europe. In this column, Rick Steves (www.ricksteves.com) (You can also email Rick at rick@ricksteves .com and follow his blog on Facebook.)
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