Another day another blogging effort. I'll see what I can do aye.
Well I guess you could always say a good morning starts with mass. Please correct me if im wrong but what better mass to attend than a high mass with the monks at the Church of St Sebastian. Click the link for the itinerary to get the artsy description of their singing, but I can only describe it as mind boggling. Their voices combined sounded like nothing id ever heard before, and aided by the acoustics of the enormous stone walls, pretty much just hypnotised all who heard. If it wasn't disrespectful I would have made my fortune by pressing record and selling it for millions a pop.
In between heavenly chants I can't say my behaviour was quite so graceful; I sat fumbling, flipping, stumbling and tripping through our booklet trying to follow on with the mass which was conveniently in Spanish/Latin. Luckily during the gospel Father Jim of Waitara was able to proclaim the word, which was a breath of fresh air before I was dunked and resubmerged into a world of Spanish/Latin.
Afterwards we made the epic journey all the way across the street into the adjacent museum and monastery where I believe benedictine St Dominic chilled out for a while during the 70 odd years of his life. Very old for a person from that century!
It was here that we saw wall carving statues of scenes such as the ascension that were over a thousand years old and still in almost perfect condition. Of course pics down below.
We also saw some awesome other statues, a chemist room with old school alchemy gear, and a library with medicinal books that were hundreds of years old. Unfortunately I wasnt able to take pics of any of that stuff. Then we went into a museum room with more statues, books, an enormous monstrance and a monk. Shown below.
After seeing all these amazing artworks from across the centuries, we were ushered into a modern art gallery. I soon left that 'gallery' after concluding that the artworks looked like the crap you get out if a used vacuum bag with some folded crepe paper on top. For your benefit I think it's a privilege I was NOT allowed to take photos.
We bounced out and got rolling on the bus. And drove the distance to the awesome town of Leon (meaning lion). The salient feature here was the massive building in which I've already forgotten the history but I'll find out later. All I know is it is now a hotel, and it looks amazing...and yes I got photos.
After walking through lovely Leon and past many bonita senoritas. We were taken to the main square and finally into Notre Dame. Not the french one...the leon. Which has the second best stain glass window collection in Europe, and although I wasn't allowed I snapped plenty of snaps.
It was amazingly visually thrilling, So much so that my eyes hurt with colour overload. Our tour guide ran us through all the meanings of the positions of the windows in relation to the sun. There is way to much to explain to post it here though.
In this case I'll let the pictures do the talking, as I cannot delineate the scenes with my limited lingual skills.
That night we bunked in a four star hotel with all the trimmings. I often think to myself how hard life is being a pilgrim. Not to much happened, we missed our pool opportunity as our bus was late sure to stragglers. But once again it didn't matter as we only had sleep on our agenda...right after we threw back a beer or two at the bar...What! It's spanish culture. :)
Sam xx
Pictures coming soon!
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