Oddities Along the Way

 

She Changes: Janet Echelman

Having just past the ancient Sao Francisco Xavier fort north of Porto, then noticing a serious looking destroyer in the nearby harbor, I assumed this large structure was some sort of military antenna, perhaps the Portuguese version of the "Stanford Dish".  It turn out it's a public art piece: She Changes, evocative of a traditional style Portuguese fishing net.

Mary, as a Wall Angel

Also on our first day.  I suspect Mary's feet wished the wings worked, and she could have taken them with her.

Roman era Fish Salting Tanks

From the nearby placard: 

Widely dispersed for 600 meters along the Angeiras Beach, they are six units of salting tanks (Roman ruin), amounting to a total of 32 pieces dug in the rocks during the Roman period (3rd to 4th centuries AD).  These rectangular cavities with diverse depths would be used for fish salting and the production of other types of canned fish, including the famous "garum". Nearby, there were also detected several structures molded by shingles and long-standing clay floors, enclosed by small stone walls. These are the vestiges of saline saltern on which salt was extracted for the brine production

Rooster of Barcelos

As we got to the outskirts of Barcelos, we started seeing large, black, stylized chicken sculptures.  It's the  

Rooster of Barcelos,  part of the cultural identity of the region, that ties it to the Camino Santiago, tolerance, and justice.

Single Cordon vineyard

We passed vineyards almost every day we walked.  Often the grapes were grown in a single strip around the field, using the existing fence posts for support.  Unlike the vineyards I'm used to seeing in Napa Valley, the vines are trained using the Single Cordon style: it looked like the main trunk was bent sideways until it just touched the next plant.

lavadouro público

We saw one of these in most of the rural villages we walked though.  Located at a stream or spring and fed with running water, they are old school do-it-yourself laundromats.  They were built throughout the 17th to early in the 20th centuries.  I image they promote a greater sense of community than the machine in the garage.

Mural of Medieval Barcelos

Many of the buildings we past in Portugal are festooned with beautiful blue tile murals.  This mural depicts the medieval version of the city, on the Cávado River.  The bridge in the mural, built in 1325, was the one we walked over.

First Supper?

We found this painting in Capela de Misericordia de Valença do Minho, a modest church in the charming walled city of Valença, just across the border from Tiu in Spain.  As we wandered through various churches along our walk, each with its own pantheon of local saints, I kind of wished we had a "Field Guide to Saints", so we could more easily identify them by their distinguishing characteristics. (If anyone knows of such a guide, I'd appreciate the link).  This one seems out of place in a church when viewed through our current cultural lens.

Insect Trap

We saw these homemade insect traps, fashioned from empty soda bottles,  hanging from many grapevines.

???

This could be a pet Pterodactyl house, left standing since ancient times.  Anyone have a better guess for what this might be?  It is near the village of O carballal, in the outskirts of Santiago de Compostela.

St.  Sebastian

This is a sculpture of St. Sebastian, from the Museum in Santiago.  The body shot full of arrows is the "tell". He looks like a voodoo doll to me, only stuffed with dowel rods instead of pins.  Missing the appropriate context, it seems like a strange piece of iconography (in this case, I'm not sure the context helps that).