Galicia???

[Jim Andrada]

My wife and I will be visiting Palermo, Venice, Paris, and St Malo/Mt St Michel in mid/late October, as previously posted here. We have 4 days free and are thinking of visiting Galicia as well. Primarily because it seems to be the area where my father's family originated. There's actually an Andrada/Andrade castle so I thought it would be fun to go see it. Aside from that does anyone have suggestions about the area, photographic or otherwise?

The castle is about 50 miles N of Santiago de Campostela so we thought we'd fly there from Paris, and fly back to Paris from Porto to connect to our flight back to the US. Thanks.

[BradS]

I've not been...but dream of going. Maybe, next year. Sounds like an excellent trip.

I search flickr for places...it's a kind of, arm chair location scouting.

[Pere Casals]

My wife and I will be visiting Palermo, Venice, Paris, and St Malo/Mt St Michel in mid/late October, as previously posted here. We have 4 days free and are thinking of visiting Galicia as well. Primarily because it seems to be the area where my father's family originated. There's actually an Andrada/Andrade castle so I thought it would be fun to go see it. Aside from that does anyone have suggestions about the area, photographic or otherwise?

The castle is about 50 miles N of Santiago de Campostela so we thought we'd fly there from Paris, and fly back to Paris from Porto to connect to our flight back to the US. Thanks.

Presently some 300k people walk yearly the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_de_Santiago

You also can visit la Paya de la Catedrales in Ribadeo. Until September 17 acces is controlled (https://ascatedrais.xunta.gal/monatr/inicio;jsessionid=gchXXYxqj10HTQCj7Ee-l5yu.prd-jboss-c02-0004-hc-001:prd-jboss-c02-0004-hc-001-server-05?lang=en) to avoid massification, but as you may go in October you won't have any problem, if weather if fine. Sea can be fierce there, but this is also an opportunity to take impressive images, if the photographer is brave :).

http://images.nationalgeographic.com.es/medio/2017/07/01/02-as-catedrais-ribadeo-web_b253016b.jpg

http://www.nationalgeographic.com.es/viajes/grandes-reportajes/las-mejores-playas-galicia_11684/1


If you like shellfish food you will be in paradise, 1st world class quality at affordable prices, if you avoid touristic hot spots.

In October/Galicia you may expect drizzle 50% of the days, it rains some 100mm accumulated in october.

[Delfi_r]

If you need some suggestion for where to eat, as Pere has said, you should avoid tourist places if you want good and cheap, send a note and I'll leave you some.

[Jim Andrada]

Yes, I understand Santiago de Campostela is a UNESCO site, which in a way is a bit worrying. A couple of years ago we were in Shirakawa-go Japan which is also a UNESCO site and the obvious places where you could see the same views you see everywhere on the web were mobbed. But drive 10 minutes away and we had the place to ourselves. The difference is that my wife and our friends are Japanese and I lived there several years so we knew where to drive to get away from the mobs. In Galicia, not so.

[Pere Casals]

Jim, here https://www.elcorreogallego.es/santiago/ecg/compostela-es-extranjeros-turismo-internacional-crece-12-puntos/idEdicion-2018-01-26/idNoticia-1096343/ you can see that in the second half of October the turism decreases a lot in Compostela (by 50%), in the first half of October there are way more people. In the rest of Galicia you will find be even tourists in late October, season is over.

Don't worry, there you will feel at home. Your galician side will be reluctant to return to the AZ owen, you may have a problem with that :)

[John Layton]

Pere...with respect to the 300K people who walk the Camino yearly - keep in mind that these numbers are spread over the many "official" camino routes to Santiago. My wife and her daughter completed the Camino Primativo (the original camino) this past May...and by no means did they feel that it was at all "crowded," in fact quite the opposite.

Granted...the Primativo tends to be somewhat less travelled as it is the most difficult and remote route, plus the crowds do tend to pick up at various points where the different routes start to converge just prior to Santiago.

[Pere Casals]

Pere...with respect to the 300K people who walk the Camino yearly - keep in mind that these numbers are spread over the many "official" camino routes to Santiago. My wife and her daughter completed the Camino Primativo (the original camino) this past May...and by no means did they feel that it was at all "crowded," in fact quite the opposite.

Granted...the Primativo tends to be somewhat less travelled as it is the most difficult and remote route, plus the crowds do tend to pick up at various points where the different routes start to converge just prior to Santiago.

John, I hope they enjoyed that adventure, it had to be nice.

In May there are half the people than in Agust:

180918

And the Camino Primitivo takes only (2015 data) 11,000 pilgrims, while the most frequented path takes 16 times more, 170,000 pilgrims:

180919





This is not a joke, a few times I travelled sections of the Camino Francés (the most populated) with a John Deere combine harvester, the harvesting season ends in August in the high plains in Burgos and Palencia, so in late August I was driving the combine to return home, a 500km trip at 30km/h, a 2 days trip with a lot of combines provocating traffic jams. Parts on the Camino and some variants go by the shoulder of the road, and as we were driving in the east direction we had all pilgrims in the same shoulder coming in the inverse direction... a 3.5m wide beast (when cutting head removed and towed) is not something you can steer out from the road shoulder, as the combine takes the shoulder plus a full lane of the road, and one may also have heavy trucks overtaking like kamikazes in a road with intense traffic... this were relatively short sections but big a nightmare. This is my experiene with the Camino :).

Most of the pilgrims make only the final sections of a route walking a few days, and half of them go through the main camino (Francés), the one that's in red in the map, but some walk more than one month.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/Ways_of_St._James_in_Europe.png/1920px-Ways_of_St._James_in_Europe.png

[Jim Andrada]

Well, finally pretty much decided what gear to take - Mamiya 645 AFD with both MF digital and film backs. Being able to use the same body and lenses for both digital (color) and film (B&W) was a big consideration. Pen F for video and casual snapshots. Have to admit I'm tempted to take the 2 x 3 Crown as well - it's compact and pretty lightweight and it's cammed for a 150mm lens, But my wife is still yelling that one camera is more than enough.:(