Our final day of walking the Camino! We both can’t believe it- after 11 days of walking over 215 kilometers (137 miles), we are almost done! From our hotel room window we saw folks setting off, including a group of Italian teenagers we had passed a few times the day before. They were remarkably quiet
Rain threatened all day, though we only occasionally got enough to warrant putting our raincoats on. We found that putting on our rain gear meant that the rain would soon stop for a while!
We passed a goat farm, a dog shelter decorated to mimic the Camino, wandered in and out of forests (we skipped taking pictures of the busy road sections) and stopped for coffee at a sweet roadside cafe. 2 euros got us 2 coffees and small slices of pound cake – what a deal!
Our coffee reinvigorated us as we climbed a few hills, went past a man playing beautiful piano music and got to the marker showing we had less than 10k to go!!!
A brief stop at the Mary Magdalene chapel (she looks like a mermaid waiting for rescue!), then stopped at the cultural center at the top of the hill to eat our lunch-it was quiet, out of the rain and had bathrooms. Yay!
Our first sighting of Santiago and the cathedral! We passed a house that had a container of hot coffee and a bench for pilgrims (and stamp of course!). Nearby a kitty was sacked out in the ivy. A trip over another medieval bridge and church and we were finally in Santiago!
Someone joked as we were approaching the cathedral in increasingly heavier rain ‘I thought the rain in Spain fell mainly on the plains!’ The weather didn’t dampen our spirits as we walked the final feet (meters!) to face the cathedral- we did it!!!
After refreshing showers we were ready for dinner! Michelle found a great place nearby and having learned our lesson from previous dinners, we only ordered appetizers to start with. The jumbo grilled shrimp were definitely that and the baby octopus with fries (aka calamari) was very filling, so we didn’t get any more food.
Michelle headed back to the hotel while Theresa braved the rain to attend the 7:30 pm pilgrims mass at the cathedral. Wow! What an incredible experience- so much gold and decoration on the main altar and the many smaller ones that ring the cathedral. It was packed at 7pm, but she was able to get an end seat at the back of the section facing the main altar. Before the service there were announcements in half a dozen languages about confessions and other services available in different languages.
Even though the service was in Spanish, Theresa was able to follow along for the most part, though she opted to skip the kneeling bits since it meant kneeling on the stone floor! You could tell the pilgrims not so much from what they wore but by how gingerly they got up from their seats, lol. It was a beautiful service.
Theresa found her way back to the hotel in the now pouring rain and we both gratefully fell into our beds ready for a good nights sleep!
