Day 27: Santiago de Compostela, 779 Kilometers Later

We loved the albergue where we stayed last night.  Tina already described the owner's generosity.  We were the only Americans there.  Most of the rest of the pilgrims were a group of young Italians and their priest.

Last night they had a big communal dinner (which they invited us to, but we declined. Pasta and my Celiac disease don't mix.)  We could hear them enjoying themselves from the open dormitory window.  Dinner finished and they began singing.  It was after nine PM, and like good little pilgrims, we were getting ready for bed.  In an albergue, you always come prepared with earplugs and eye shades to help you sleep through anything.

Well, these kids started with church songs and great harmony.  On and on they went.  Running out of those, they switched to songs by Queen, in English!  "We are the champions, my friends!  And we'll keep on fighting 'till the end!"  It was hard not to laugh.

Their party broke up by ten PM and we had a great night's sleep.  This morning, we got up at five, dressed, read some very nice overnight messages from our kids wishing us luck, and were out the door into the darkness at 5:30.

Everything was wet.  It had been raining overnight, and before long, it started misting, then drizzling, and then intermittently raining.  This would continue for the entire 25 kilometer hike.  I had fresh batteries in my headlamp, we both wore our ugly blue Smithsonian ponchos.  We were ready for anything.

At a few minutes after six, we walked into the town of O Pedrouzo, and I whined enough until Tina let me get a cup of coffee.  The cafe was so hot inside that Tina sat outside, under an awning on a small ledge and I stood on the sidewalk while we had our drinks.  During those ten minutes, pilgrims came from both directions to this, the only open cafe in town.

We resumed walking and ran into a group of three Canadian ladies, friends from Alberta, also wearing head lamps.  We exchanged pleasantries.  (Another bit of wisdom: never assume people are American.  Canadians hate that!)  The best line of the morning, from one of the ladies upon discovering that we too had started weeks ago in France: "Of course!  Only people who started at Saint Jean would be crazy enough to be up at five!"

The glow of the Santiago airport as seen from the woodlands outside O Pedrouzo

At our usual pace, we average about five kilometers an hour plus breaks.  Today's walk would take something like five plus hours.  Of course, walking in the dark slows you down as you look for way markers, and the rain also makes you more careful.  For the longest time, we didn't see many other pilgrims.  The newbies seemed to be staying in, hoping the weather would pass.  It didn't.

Action photograph of Tina booking it through the rain.  Photo courtesy of me.

 There are not a lot of photos from this morning's walk because, frankly, whenever we went up a hill, you couldn't see anything.  There were a lot of hills.  The most famous one is named Monte do Gozo, and it's the site of a famous pilgrim monument overlooking Santiago.  We couldn't see it.  A friend of ours spent his final night there--and he didn't see it either!

During the last 100 kilometers, you're required to get your pilgrim credential stamped twice per day.  We got our first stamp where we got coffee at six and our second in a small Galician bar in a suburb named San Marco, where I had a Coke and Tina warmed up with another coffee at 9:45.  We were making great time.

Ten AM, we hit the outskirts of Santiago.  If you look closely, you can see "Santiago" in a small sign on the right.

Getting closer. You can see the cathedral in the background

This was exciting!  We followed the signs through the Western neighborhoods of the city towards the cathedral in the historic center.  About three blocks away, we passed a cafe where two musicians on violin and cello were playing Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World".  I started to lose it.

I may someday get the hang of taking a selfie.  That's us in front of the cathedral at 10:45 AM

We checked into our hotel--of course our room wasn't ready.  We didn't care--we're pilgrims!  Nobody gets a room that early in the day.  We left our backpacks and went to the pilgrim office to get our diplomas, the famous "Compostelas".  As we expected, there were a ton of people there.  Many had arrived the day before.  The lines are legendary, so they came back in the morning.

The line at the pilgrim office.  It stretched outside into the rain after we got there.

Our Compostelas.  It's official: 779 kilometers.  (That's 484 miles.)

Our credentials.  That's a lot of stamps.

Why is this woman smiling?

 After the Pilgrim Office, we got together with our friend Karin from Sweden.  She arrived yesterday and will be leaving tomorrow for home.  We had lunch in a touristy restaurant with a friend of hers from England, Michael.  It was great to share stories of the walk and the different towns that we'd visited one day apart.

Tina and Karin

After lunch, outside the restaurant, we ran into our friend Tristan from earlier on the Camino.  He had gotten in this morning as well.  The next few days will be like this as the fellow travelers we met over the past four weeks walk into town.

As we compared stories, we came to appreciate how lucky we were to be healthy at the end of this trek.  Friends less than half our age have been hobbled by injuries.  It's been painful to watch.  Some haven't yet arrived.  There are some lessons here...

Tonight, we went out for a nice dinner and had a bottle of sparkling Albariño, the signature grape of Galicia, to celebrate our anniversary (7/26/1986).  We're not setting any alarms for the morning, and I'm not walking any kilometers to get that first cup of coffee.

We realize that there are a bunch of items, some hilarious, that never made it into this blog.  There have also been a lot of lessons and observations from along the way.  Our next post will be a potpourri of all of those.