Spanish Adventure – Part 2 – Exploring Melide

After checking the hotel menu and deciding we would give it a try later we set out to explore.  Melide is a charming place, and while it is on the pilgrim route – we saw lots of people with their backpacks and hiking sticks – it has not succumbed to the tourist trade, something for which we were grateful.  At the centre of the town is one of the stone pilgrim crosses, several villages have them in the area, one side is Christ crucified on the other Christ reigning, this particular one had been moved at some time and sat outside a simple small church which we never saw unlocked, something unusual for the region.

 As we explored the cool side streets we discovered a gem of a church, Parroquia San Pedro – the Parish church of San Pedro – this is one that the pilgrims make for and was open.

Inside it was wonderfully cool and the colours breathtaking much like many churches in provincial parts of the continents the riches it contains contrasted deeply with the relative wealth of those who live in and around it, although there was an obvious lack of money in trying to upkeep the building.

Try as we might we could not find out whose relics were now hidden beneath a shroud of gold lamme from the sensitive eyes of the 21century pilgrim, but I am supposing it was most likely an early pilgrim or even relics of San Pedro himself, but we might never know as even doing some delving using the internet has produced no information.

Back out into the quiet street, most of the shops were closed and it was only us and a handful of other visitors and pilgrims who walked about in the heat of the afternoon, as the locals sat in pavement cafes or stayed indoors. More a habit of a lifetime than due to the heat as it was only in the low 20’s.

Those who read my blog regularly will know of my love for old buildings especially ones which are heading towards ruins, Melide had them in abundance, house and shops just shut up and left, no vandals graffiti or burning them down just nature slowly reclaiming them. There was some although not a lot of new building going on to, mostly homes for the locals although they still use high cranes to move the slabs of concrete, which they now mostly build in, about.

Even the electricity sub stations had charm about them:

While these drying huts, unique to the region where a common sight especially once you were out the town.  They use them mainly to dry and store corn but also to dry other things.  Some were basic others were elaborately painted or had fine masonry on the two ends, and some were very grand indeed, although unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of them:

And if you didn’t have one of those, you just found an old pallet, and a spare bit of ground and laid your garlic out to dry in the sun!

Getting hungry we headed back down the narrow cool lanes to the hotel, for us it had been a long day and we hoped to be able to unpack and eat. The unpacking was going to have to wait until after dinner though as when we arrived back at the hotel our case still hadn’t so we had a drink in the bar while we waited for the restaurant to open and then at 7:45pm headed into it. As I said in my pervious post the hotel were not used to tourists and this meant a mad flurry – I use the term loosely as the Spanish do everything at a sedate pace – of activity as lights were switched on, staff were found to man the kitchens and eventually after some linguistic confusion a menu was found. Most of it we managed to understand and quickly decided that I would have the langoustines, Hubby the cold meats, followed by the paella and squid. Well that was the plan at least. The bread arrived, the local bread is full of air and similar to the Italian panni only three times as thick and six times as chewy, but unlike in Italy there was no oil to dunk it in so after the initial tasting it was left in it’s basket as we waited for another burst of activity from the hotel staff. Eventually someone arrived and with her limited English and our limited Spanish we soon discovered everything we wanted including second and third choices was off the menu. We could have tomato soup and a pork chop with potatoes! It was now 8:30pm and as hungry and tired as we were we had lost all faith in whether these would even turn up and neither of us really wanted them anyway, so we decided to head back out into the town and try our luck at one of the local cafes.

Looking along the now busy high street we choose a table in the shade at the blue tables to discover we had picked a pizza restaurant, not having the will to move and look again we stayed put and were rewarded with the most delicious bowl of local green olives and one of the regions wines. The wine was glorious best likened to a white rijoca and came from the southern most tip of Galica, Ribeira. It is made using grapes which are local just to the region and the type we were drinking is not exported at all, even from what we could gather to other regions of Spain. It is delicious and if you are even in the region a must to the at least try. The pizzas were good too, made using the local bread and with fresh vegetables and a local tangy blue cheese, the tiredness of the day was washed out from us and we relaxed in the pleasant evening sun. Finally we decided it was time to head back and were shocked at how cheap our evening meal had been, about a third of what we had been expecting!

We arrived back at the hotel to discover that our case had still not arrived, so a quick phone call was in order.
‘We are waiting on our case we were told it would be delivered this evening.’
‘Oh yes, we couldn’t track were the hotel was can you give us the address?’
The address was given.
‘Where is that?’
They were told.
It would appear that even the locals didn’t know of this town and certainly didn’t know of the hotel.
‘We won’t be able to get it to you tonight, but it will be there first thing in the morning between 7 and 8am.’
We weren’t pleased, we hadn’t travelled with any hand luggage – bad mistake won’t be doing that again – but we didn’t really have an awful lot of choice so climbed into bed slightly annoyed but totally charmed by Melide and Galica.