DAY FORTY EIGHT: 25 November 2012 Muxia to Santiago de Compostela
I had dinner with Tobias from Denmark after the Marea documentary in Restaurent de La Lolo. This was the classiest restaurant with a pilgrim menu so far. Sleek, modern ecletic style more suited to hot Summer days than chilly winter but the heating was on and the staff were pleasant. The 3 course menu proved to be pleasantly different from the usual pilgrim fare and the wine seemed extra special too. If we weren’t in pilgrim attire we could have been mistaken as a couple; me the cougar and Tobias my toyboy. Tobias is polite, good company, has great manners and a Colgate smile. He has a face that will only grow more handsome as he shape shifts into his life whatever that may be.
Miel is Tigger in the morning, eager for breakfast and company but my preference, Restaurent de La Lolo of the night before, doesnt sit well with him. I hold my ground and have breakfast to my delight on my own. I am assimilating this trip. I want to savour the last drops of it dripping slowly and honour it’s closure. A short walk from the town is the headland where the Virgin Mary came to assure Saint James that his mission to convert the population of Fisterra from their pagan worship of the sun had been a success. I have no intention of being blasphemous but my guess is that Mary was a mistress of metaphor while poor old James was getting all bogged down in the logical reality. A bit like me and my sailor in his pea green boat.
Mary’s boat is said to be still here, petrified on the headland below the imposing coastal-Gothic style church of Our Lady of The Boat. I was curious to see it. Sure enough there are are three huge stones one of which definitely looks like the upturned hull of the boat and another has a look of a sail. The third stone, supposedly the rudder is a little less convincing.