Today we hired two cars and went to Santiago de Compostela, about an hour from La Coruña. It is the third most important city in Christendom, after Jerusalem and Rome, as it is where thousands of pilgrims have walked to for centuries to go to the cathedral where Saint James is buried. It is also considered the most perfect medieval city in Spain and we can certainly understand why because the old town is still complete and has many fabulous buildings and churches and the cathedral is extraordinary. There were many young people arriving in the town throughout the day with their special walking sticks. There is a mass every day at noon in the cathedral to welcome the walkers so we went to some of that - the nun who sang has a beautiful voice so it was quite special to be there.
Having a car also gave us a chance to see more of La Coruña, which is a large city and yet we had mostly only seen the old town and around the port. The marina is on the old town side of the promontory but on the other side is a very long sweeping beach and promenade. The city also has a huge soccer stadium and an impressive opera house and it is famous for many reasons, such as being the port where Vasco da Gama set off on his epic journey and having the art school where Pablo Picasso's father taught and so Picasso lived in the town for quite some time at different stages of his life. Travel certainly teaches one a lot about many things.