Sept 11: Pilgrim sculptures

Today, we walked about 20 km and visited 2 very nice churches.  However, I feel like I've probably bored you enough with pictures of churches.  So I thought I would share some photos of Pilgrim statues.  For some reason, today we came across a bunch of sculptures of pilgrims.  The first picture below is on our way out of Fromista, where we stayed last night.  This statue was right before crossing a bridge over a major highway in the area.  I don't know if I mentioned this before, but Santiago de Compostela (our final destination) is made up of 2 words.  I know I mentioned that Santiago is actually a shortened version of San Tiago or Saint James.  Compostela is also supposedly a shortened version of two words.  Compo is "field" in older Spanish, and stela means "star" (again, in older Spanish).  The story goes that the person who found the remains of Saint James was drawn to some field by a bright light or star.  So the name of the town that was built around this burial place became Santiago de Compostela, and hence the stars in the first pilgrim sculpture below.

The second picture is a sculpture we came across along the Camino.  You can see it has a sign in front of it that says "Monumento del Perigrino" or monument to the pilgrim. The third picture is of Linda hanging out with one of her new pilgrim friends at a local eating establishment in Villalcazar de Sirga.  We actually ate lunch at another place in this town, but came across this statue as we were leaving the Plaza Mayor and thought it was a fun photo opportunity.  And the final picture is of me with a pilgrim statue near the entrance to the city of Carrion de los Condes, where we are staying (I'm doing a very poor imitation of the same pose as the statue).

By the way, tonight we are staying in an old monastery that has been converted into a 4 star hotel.  The monastery originally dates back to the 11th century, with additions/changes made to it up until the 16th century.  It's a really nice place, and they've done a great job of maintaining a lot of the historical look and feel in certain sections of the building.  This is not one of the Spanish paradors, which are old churches that the government has converted into high end hotels.  We stayed in one of those in Roncesvalles and will get to stay in another later in the trip.  This monastery is privately owned and actually has more of the feel of an old building on the outside and in certain sections.  But in the renovated areas it is definitely an upscale hotel with great amenities.  Usually, after checking in and showering, we head out on the town to check out the historical sites, but we agreed that tonight we would just hang around our hotel and check out everything it has to offer.  Perhaps I can post some pictures of the hotel later.