Camino de Santiago, dia 10

October 2nd: I gallantly offered to join Lisa in her Uber from Redondela. We waited thirty minutes for the car (a very nice Mercedes EV), then another 40-minute drive to Pontevedra, the pleasant touristic city that has set aside a substantial portion of old-town to pedestrian streets.

The others stayed at Hotel Virgem Del Camino, while I booked at Hotel Madrid. I dropped off my backpack, then returned to lunch with Lisa at the Hotel Virgem Del Camino–surprisingly big fish lunch.

Pontevedra is worth a tourist visit; I took advantage of my early arrival (before the hotel room was available) to visit the municipal museum – very big building beautifully exhibiting hundreds of local paintings and a reasonable discussion of the area history. Again, evidence of Spain's wealth in such a lavish free museum, sparsely attended.

The central plaza's church is dedicated to pilgrims, so I got a "sello” there of course. Then I checking in to Hotel Madrid, old and small but decent–and a bathtub where I could soak my feet! The wi-fi was a bit spotty, so my scheduled zoom-call with Democrats Abroad planning group was difficult. I returned to the other hotel to have dinner with the whole group – same waiter, same menu, so I just got croquettes!

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String Quartet Broken String

We attended a marvelous concert last night, at the Porto Museum of Casa do Infante , a beautifully-renovated 1325 building near the river. At one point it served as a customs house. The government sponsors Portuguese musicians to return from other European orchestras to perform in their homeland. We heard and saw this group play a traditional piece – Haydn string quartet Opus 20 #2. Then the modern Benjamin Britten's Three Divertimenti – the stunning last movement of which they performed as an encore. They performed (and I recorded) the Shostakovich Quartet #9, during which the first-violinist broke a string (it features several strongly-plucked chords!) and had to retreat&repeat!

EUA: tanto estrago em tão pouco tempo

As part of my effort to learn about Portugal, both the country and the language, I'm subscribing to the centrist newspaper, O Publico . There are plenty of newspapers: conservative tabloids, and socialist and communist-sponsored daily papers; I find O Publico to be most sober, with consistently interesting columnists and opinion pieces, in addition to some local (Porto) news, with just enough sporting news to keep me chatting with the taxi driver. Today's opinion piece sums up, I think, European pundits' view of the U.S. government. As the title puts it: so much damage in so little time. I shudder at the rank incompetence and corrupt behavior, demonstrating a cynical attitude toward public service, showing indeed that the cruelty is the point. What scandal, what damage will be the tipping point to collapse this government? And what will it take to recover from the damage? Who will be able to trust the US government again, ever? Only ni...

Música Tunas e Boémia

We attended an unusual concert last night: Música Tunas e Boémia (bands and parties) University student folk-music groups — big groups of 40 and more each! put on a great show of singing, playing, flag-twirling, tambourine-swinging, all at the major (private) concert hall. The most unusual thing about it was that nobody used any electronic device (except for microphone amplification)—no electric guitar or keyboard, no big drum set…every instrument and prop was hand-held. The singing was quite good, given the effort to synchronize 40 voices.

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