How most Shark's Fin is harvested nowadays

(followup on previous post: On why the Shark's Fin Industry needs PR help)

France/Spain 2011 - Day 7, Part 5 - Jaca

"The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives." - Lois McMaster Bujold

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France/Spain 2011
Day 7 - 23rd March - Jaca (Part 5)

We then reached the town of Jaca.


Jaca street


This is probably a church


Local treats


What you see is a thick sugar glaze on this local treat - flaky pastry


Another road


Pickup van outside Cathedral of San Pedro


Gate to Cathedral of San Pedro


Information on the cathedral. It is part of the World Heritage Site "Route of Santiago de Compostela".


Portal. Notice the mendicant

There was a nice museum inside the cathedral which was supposed to close at 7 but they let us in even though it was 6:40pm, which was very nice of them.


Act of Council of Jaca. This is a facsimile


Musical instruments


Murals on chapel walls of Osia, with writeup


More frescoes, from Urriés. They're like a manuscript in large format.




Cloisters


Reliquary ark


More murals


Murals from Bagüés



The murals were excellent, but in contrast the items were quite shitty after the high quality artefacts in Colmar.


Christ on Cross


Virgin and Child


Virgin and Child


Christ on the Cross


Chapter House


Capital in Chapter House


Capital


Capital: alternate angle


Cloisters again. I'm guessing the garden looks much better later in the year.


The Secretum


Ceiling of Secretum


Ascension of the Virgin


Holy Burial


Altarpiece


St Michael the Archangel


Virgin and Child


Key to "Altarpiece of the Virgin with Child"


Altarpiece of the Virgin with Child


Cathedral nave

The cathedral wasn't interesting except for the trick they used of keeping it in darkness (this was the only supposedly-open-for-business unlit church I could ever remember being in [and one of the very few such buildings, period - in fact only the top floor of the Naples National Archaeological Museum comes to mind]). To light it up one had to pay one Euro.


Lit nave


Porch of cathedral


Exterior of cathedral


Couple walking 3 dogs


Citadel


Some of the 2.8kg of eggs I lugged halfway across Europe


Plaza del Marques de la Cadena


Crest on Wall


Statue of Ramiro I


A quarilingual sign: French, Spanish and probably Basque and Catalan (the website also has Occitan)

We then had dinner tapas style.


Clams, tortilla with prawns, bacalau (salt cod) with mashed potato


Jamon cylinders, fish curry puffs. I use the term deliberately as inside was mashed egg, fish and chili.


This might've been something else.


Kidney

We then went to another bar to try their tapas.


Anchovy olives. Usually both are salty, so this was a killer combination.


Snails with aioli. Give me escargots with garlic butter any day - this was quite tasteless.


Tripe


Calamari. This was very light, but there was no sauce to cut the oil, so I used the aioli.


Tx[something] on bread. They were sausages.


Rokelin - with legs of ham hanging on the wall


This menu is cheap, but the food is questionable with dishes such as "Icicles Rossini to the Oven", "Stew of attacked vegetables", "Little Hams of Chicken Roasted in His Juice" and "Rabbit to the Chilindron". Again the French is better than the English.


A 16 gb memory card means one can go crazy. Unfortunately this causes problems on returning, as I am currently finding out.