Catching up again… I’ll be posting a ton of stuff this evening. To keep everything in order I’ll start off with last Monday.

Monday morning we went to the President’s Complex in Santiago. Lately, I’ve been struck by the similarities between Santiago de Compostela and Richmond. Both are the capital of the local government and both have large university populations that create the culture during most of the year. Of course, Santiago has the pilgrim thing that happens during the summer, but the comparison mostly holds up.

On a hill across from the Cathedral is the residence of the President — created about 10 years ago (I don’t remember the exact year) by a prominent Galician architect. (Note that the project to create the President’s residence was concurrent with the City of Culture project.) The project takes up the entire top of the hill and includes offices, gardens and a house within a walled compound and a public garden. We were not allowed in the compound, but we reviewed the plans of the house and walked around it and then spent a bit of time in the public gardens. It was pleasant.

If I’m remembering correctly, there was no lecture on Monday, so we had the entire day to work on our studio project. I’ll post about that separately.

And that was Monday. There’s really only one photo with the president’s garden. You can see it here.