Epilog: Paco's Version

We arrived in Santiago on Thursday in the rain, and the bad weather continued all through Friday.  The reaction of the local people was "Summer's not supposed to be like this.  The weather's changing."  The high point of Friday was eating lunch in a really nice restaurant, "San Jaime", in the historic city center where most of the restaurants are tourist traps.

We went to the cathedral to hug Saint James, but the lines were too long.  Let me explain.  Behind the altar, there's a statue of Saint James (Santiago).  You can climb a set of stairs and enter a small room behind the statue and discreetly give your favorite apostle a bear hug even during mass.  It's actually a super nice thing to do.  We decided to return early Saturday to beat the crowds. 

Saturday, August 10

Since we know when we're leaving, we no longer have to do our laundry in the sink!

We go to the Cathedral fifteen minutes before it opens... and wait on line outside.

Nobody likes getting up early in Spain.

But the plan works!  We're among the first inside and we get to hug Saint James.  Afterwards, we enter the crypt below where he's buried, say a prayer, and light another candle.  Now, the visit to Santiago feels complete.

When I reread the posts from day 1 and day 27, I laughed to see the repeated mention of the Queen song "We Are the Champions"...  Then this happened:

It's like the Camino has an official anthem!  These are the same ladies that were playing Louis Armstrong when we arrived.

We had time to kill before our first museum, so we got some coffee and sat outside at a cafe.  We were accosted by mangy pigeons that wanted the free pound cake that came with our drinks. Seriously, they jumped onto the surrounding tables and then jumped to the spare chairs at our table and wouldn't stop despite repeated shooing.  Then Tina came up with a great idea. She put a glass ashtray over the cake and put it on another table.  All of the pigeons went there!  They fought over the ashtray, but they couldn't get at the cake.  Passersby took photos and videos.  We had our coffee in peace.

We visited the Galician People's Museum (Museo do Pobo Galego), which is a really cool place that isn't on anybody's list of must-do things.  It highlights the history and culture of this amazing part of Spain.  Having walked for days through small towns, it really resonated with us.  We'd previously visited in 2005 and really wanted to do it again.  This one display, for me, showed how poor this area was: a raincoat made of straw.

Straw raincoat plus wooden shoes.  It rains here at least nine months of the year.

The building is amazing. A double spiral staircase.

The museum used to be a convent.  Part is still an active church.

We also visited the Pilgrimage Museum, a new building next to the cathedral.  I posted this photo on Facebook, taken from the stairwell.

Stuff we never wrote about in the blog.

You might remember me talking about the town of Boadilla on Day 14.  Probably the low point of the trip, it had a lot of mosquitoes--and I made the mistake of sleeping in front of an open window.  For the next week, I was covered with bug bites--so many that I was worried that it was bed bugs.  I bought insect repellent and hydrocortisone for the itch.  We ran all of my stuff through the first dryer we had access to.  I itched for a week until... until I stopped itching.  I can talk about it now, but I was mortified.

We passed a lot of small farms along the way.  It dawned on us that the small farmers were all old people.  These small towns are dying and the old people are clinging to their way of life.  Larger farms seem to be the norm in Castilla y Leon, but even in Galicia, we started to see larger parcels and big pieces of farm equipment.

A small tractor, pulling a load of hay, blocks the Camino on Day 25.

Here's a photo I never posted from the start of the Camino.  Once we got out of the Basque country, it just didn't seem to fit anywhere.

Don't even try to figure out the Basque language!

I've got lots of stupid observations that I'd be happy to share over a gluten free beer somewhere.  My last bit is about this blog.  I blogged about walking the Portuguese Camino four years ago with my daughters Julia and Michelle, and that document has helped me both remember and relive that wonderful experience.  At the time, the express purpose of the blog was to keep everyone at home informed of our progress.

This blog is meant to do the same thing, but it's so much longer than the old one.  Anyway, the last comment is that we didn't meet anyone else writing a blog, but there were a lot of people writing copious notes in their journals every evening.  It wasn't unusual to see a light in the bunk room as someone was trying to remember all of the wonderful details of their day.

The Camino has been (as I expected) one of the best things that I've ever done.  I never want to forget these four weeks.  Thanks for following us!