On the splendidly crafted Portico de la Gloria a handprint in the marble has been hollowed out over centuries by millions of pilgrims. Placing your hand in the same spot is a spiritual experience. Sweet leek soup with goose barnacles, anyone?Best cultural attractionAlvaro Siza’s breezeblock of a building on the edge of the old city houses Santiago’s contemporary art gallery and eases the city into the 21st century. Spring highlights include exhibitions by Christian Jankowski and Arturo Herrera.Best shoppingFor centuries, Santiago’s jewellers have been fashioning necklaces and rings made out of locally hewn azabache (jet) set in silver. The stones are said to have magical properties and can be bought in numerous jewellers in the streets around the cathedral. For a contemporary take on this traditional craft, try Noroeste, Ruela de Xerusalen, 10 (00 34 981 577130). Its low-level plateresque facade is one of the reasons for visiting Santiago, its interiors are stunning (boasting four early-Renaissance cloisters) and they serve a fine cocktail in the restaurant bar A double room costs €240 per night including breakfast.

A friendly central option in a recently restored mansion, it has a wonderful interior courtyard flanked by the medieval city wall.Best restaurantThe intimate Michelin-starred To?icente, Calle Rosalia de Castro, 24 (00 34 981 594100) offers the city’s most innovative haute-cuisine take on local Galician specialities, especially seafood such as octopus, monkfish and sea bass Price from €60 per head for three courses without wine. Santiago de Compostela dates back to 813, when a visionary hermit discovered St James the Apostle’s remains on the site of what is now the city’s magnificent cathedral. Hotel Costa Vella, Puerta de la Pe?17 (00 34 981 569530; ) offers double rooms from €70, with breakfast an extra €5.50. The weather might not be the most clement, but this is a city famed to look even better in the rain – and there are plenty of bars, restaurants and galleries in which to shelter from the frequent showers. Nowadays, you don’t need to walk all the way there; Santiago boasts a small but busy airport.
Best hotelIn the shadow of the Baroque cathedral, the Hostal de los Reyes Catolicos, Plaza do Obradoiro (00 34 981 582200; ), claims to be the oldest hotel in the world, having been a refuge for pilgrims since its foundation in 1499. A beautiful hilltop town grew up to accommodate those who have flocked there since, traditionally along a well-beaten track across northern Spain. There’s plenty in the historic centre of what is now the capital of Galicia to make the journey worth the effort, from wonderful medieval, Renaissance and Baroque architecture to some of the best food and wine in Spain.

Its ‘Three Kingdoms’ walk in Catalonia, Aragon and Valencia costs from £839 per person, based on two sharing. This includes return flights from Heathrow to Barcelona, rail/taxi transfers, seven nights’ B&B with six dinners and five picnics, luggage transfers, walking maps and notes. They would prepare meals so gargantuan that one of the collection team had to be appointed Designated Eater. Many offered to serve as volunteers and one even suggested that the best way of obtaining books was to hang around intensive care units and put pressure on all the expiring Jews.Most of this older generation was also keen to talk, at great length, about their early immigrant years. Although some were still obsessed with ancient ideological quarrels, many were passionate “homegrown intellectuals” who represented to Lansky “everything that was good about the old Yiddish world: humour, generosity, intelligence, kindness, social consciousness, and an almost preternatural sense of Yiddishkeit [Jewishness]“.All this is touchingly described, but Lansky also had his enemies. Departures are available from 1 April until 16 July and then 1 September until 31 October.Further informationSpanish National Tourist Office (020-7486 8077; ) and .. Each room is named after a Spanish station (with a couple of suites: New York and Istanbul) and designed to represent the local area The sunken bath is in Merida Atocha has bare brick walls and a warm, tiled floor.

Outside, the owners chase the new puppy, the puppy chases the cats, and everyone chases the swallows that flit about the eaves catching flies.As the sun goes down, you wander over to the old ticket office and let your eyes follow the train track that stretches out across the valley. But I’d rather not.GIVE ME THE FACTSHow to get thereThe author travelled as a guest of Inntravel (01653 617906; ). Would you feel more virtuous if you were contemplating walking it with a leaden rucksack and a packet of Ryvita? Maybe a little. You breathe in the local grenache and lazily survey the map for the next day’s walk. A new machine has been invented that shakes the trees until the olives drop At least, that is the theory.

Farmers of very old trees say they do not know whether to hang their nets beneath the trees, to catch the olives, or under the machine, to catch the nuts and bolts that are shaken out when it attempts to trouble the immovable roots.Whereas La Torre del Visco was lovingly converted from an ancient farmhouse (the English owners had to buy the farm complete with 1,400 pigs), la Parada del Compte used to be a railway station. But the contrasts you will notice between the flavours – apples, pepper, waxy lemons, fat, green grass – are extraordinary. The best olives come from trees that are about 800 years old – although the oldest in the valley is about 1,500. Aragon chefs compete like madmen over their Romescu sauce (with olive oil, garlic and sweet red peppers) The salty almonds are dished up with drinks.