Transition Reward

The city of Astorga is at the end of the Meseta, with the foothills of the Leonese mountains in the new distance, our next challenge.

sunset over distant foothills

Our leg muscles had to work differently for the first time in what seems like ages, as the entrance to this city, which is more like a good sized market town, goes steeply up a hill, from which is has a marvelous view. No doubt this is also why it became a city in the first place, as being able to: A) see your enemies coming from a long way off and B) prevent them from easily just walking into town, were key factors. Lots of roads converge here, as well as the Camino Frances, on which we are walking.

But Astorga is worth looking at in its own right. It has a wonderful Cathedral that, as all the Cathedrals we've seen to date, was built over an earlier one. There are still Romanesque remnants, most of it is Gothic, with a wonderful Baroque carved stone entrance, and an equally wonderful Renaissance retablo inside, but there are a lot of later additions due to a huge earthquake that initiated all the way from Lisbon, and a human earthquake in the form of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Cathedral's impressive buttressing and West Facade

We were not able to get into the Cathedral museum as it was closed when Mass was on, and then it was just closed.

But we did get into the Bishop's Palace and Museum. No bishop actually got to live there, but it was designed by famous architect Antonio Gaudi to house one. Gaudi was firmly in his 'gothic' phase when he started this place, but the bishop for whom it was intended died and there was a 20 year hiatus, so the place was finished by someone else (in 1913). Now it houses the Museum of the Pilgrimmage, and houses many exhibits tied to the Camino.

view of main floor with rooms off elaborate centre hallway

Gaudi had a thing for owls, so of course
there are some here

Gaudi's version of gothic glass

interior window to get light into dark hallway
from central hall

dining room

even the basement is gothic

it's not much, but it's home

garden angle about 30 feet high

But perhaps the best thing about Astorga of all is the fact that it was the hub of Spain's chocolate making for centuries up until the 1920s and is still known as a chocolate making city. In fact, Astorga was one of the first European cities to even taste chocolate, in the 16th century. Hernan Cortes was the guy that brought cocoa to Spain in the 1520s, and he was engaged to be married to an Astorga noblewoman. The marriage did not happen in the end, but Astorga was where all items that came to Spain via Galicia has to pass on their way to Madrid, so the city experienced new products from the Americas first.

There is a museum of chocolate (moderately interesting), which includes tastings at the end, and there are more chocolaterias in the city than you can shake a stick at, so of course we had a bowl of hot chocolate as only Spain can make it, dark and thick, almost like pudding. The only way it can be eaten is with a spoon, unless of course one has the foresight to order churros, which are a cakey dough deep fried in small, ridged loops, then sprinkled with granulated sugar. Piping hot and crispy, these are dipped in the hot chocolate and eaten with a feeling of sheer joy.

old chocolate molds

packaging