We have arrived safe and sound in Santiago. Usually, coming into big cities, it’s a lot of road walking and traffic and on the Camino Frances, tons of pilgrims. Neither today. Delightful little villages and narrow lanes, forests, old churches and only a few pilgrims and a smidgen of roads. A great walk and the 25 km seemed to fly by, even though we eased our pace to savour the last day of this Camino.
Of course, it’s mainly about the journey, but with the Camino, it’s also about the destination — Santiago de Compestela — the end point for the dozen or so different Caminos. We were looking forward to attending mass in the Cathedral (the pot of gold) and hoping to reunite with people we’d seen along the Way.
After arriving, we found our Hostal (Mapalousa — very nice. 40 euros) showered changed and headed out to pick up our Compestela, scanning the crowds for faces we might recognize. In the old town, there are so many people who have obviously just completed a walk. Some in the full regalia: packs, staffs and gourds, some hobbling in sandals with bandaged feet, some in telltale quick-dry zip off pants. Our Irish friend, Patrick, who will be arriving tomorrow, likes to joke about pilgrims who walk by while he’s sitting outside a cafe, relaxed, clean and washed as “dirty, vile pilgrims”.
Within a 100 metres or we came upon Annette from Australia sitting at a cafe. We met her and her two travelling partners maybe 3 weeks ago and had lost track of them. And as we sat there, Shiraz from Israel joined us.
Later, to our great surprise we met up with an Australian friend from our Camino last year. He’d just completed part of the Camino Ingles and Camino Primitivo. And, for the record, four others, Sean and Alison (UK and Peru), the Dutch couple and Freddy’s pal, the German woman.
We went early for the 7:30 mass, but right away knew it wouldn’t be as crowded. No Botafumeiro like we saw last year, but still very nice experience and beautiful singing. Shiraz sat with us and that made it special for all of us.
As I write this, it’s the next morning and we are on a high speed train to Madrid. Will overnight there near the airport and get an early flight home the next day.
A few pix from our last day on the Caminho Portugues. It was truly a Bom Caminho.
And, here’s a pic of our journey. Each green dot shows where we stayed on the Caminho Porugues (and the red dots were last year’s Camino Frances. The blue ones Camino Fisterre)
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Cobblestones 