Almost Home

All that is between me and home is some time, a taxi and three plane rides.

I tried following the directions for the walk that enters the town where the five gates to the old city used to be.  The direction said to go left out of the park onto a certain street.  Well, they don't put street signs on the park end of dead end streets and there were several options.  I, of course, chose the wrong one.  I wandered the town some and found my way to the university.   I went back and sat in three of the four squares around the cathedral.

This is my favorite one for just sitting and watching the cathedral:

It is at the eastern end.  There is a massive convent behind you with a bench that runs the entire length.  The roof guide said it had ties to both Celtic and Roman burial grounds.  This was the first day there wasn't annoying jazz being played.

The western side is the one facing the main cathedral entrance.  It is generally crowed with tourists and pilgrim groups.

The south side is the only one that does not have a Baroque facade and the Romanesque structure is still visible.

There are usually street performers here.  I came out the door this afternoon to the sounds of "Minstrel Boy".  They sang and juggled through several songs, then claimed to be a group of American seminary students who had walked the camino without any money.  Funny thing is that their repertoire came straight from the Clancey & Makem albums, right down to breaking up words into slightly different syllables than Americans use.  I would have thrown some change into their hat if they hadn't lied to me.  

There seems to be a schedule for the performers around the church.  I caught a shift change once or twice.  If this group was performing, they were doing it on the schedule location and at the scheduled time.

This was another of my favorite places to sit:

It is outside the Franciscan church.  It is down below street level and has free wifi.

The line at the pilgrim's office has grown everyday that I've been here. Today it was out the door and down the street.  I took me over an hour and I started ten feet inside the door.  Those people in the street are probably waiting three hours or more.

Now I just need to repack the pack, shower and try to get some sleep.  I am ready to be home.

What To Do?

I had no real plan for today other than to sleep in.  The pilgrims from the Portuguese route got together in Obradoiro Square last night.  We had thought we would go out for a drink to celebrate, but there were way more people than we thought and not all of the cohort showed up.  There were 20 or more people and we had trouble finding a place to hold us all.  When we did it didn't have any vegetarian options and my Italian friends don't eat meat.  They were the ones I cared most about so we went elsewhere and had our own celebration.  It was a late night by camino standards, we were back at the hostal around 11pm.

This morning I got my Compostela.  The woman took my credential and the registration sheet, hit a few keys on the computer, asked the guy next to her how to put my name into Latin.  I couldn't follow his reply, but she hit a few more keys, wrote something, and asked if I also wanted a certificate of distance. I walked a combination of routes, the shortest was 258 km, I got lost and, when given an option, took the longer scenic route.  Any number I gave her would have to be an educated guess.  I declined the distance certificate.  I was, however, quite disappointed to find my name had not been converted to Latin.

I took my Compostela and started towards the Franciscan church to get their Compostela (2014 is the 800th anniversary of Francis of Assissi's walk, so this is quite a rare thing to have) and very quickly found myself hugging Giovanni, someone I met through Cate.  He had just been to headbutt the saint and say a prayer at the crypt.

He hadn't heard about the Franciscan Compostela.  He ran back to his hotel to get his credential while I went to headbutt a statute.  Tradition dictates that pilgrims thank the saint for successfully completing the journey (they hug or rest their head on a gold plated statue) then pay their respects to his remains.

Giovanni is from Umbria and was quite moved to receive the Franciscan certificate.  Here are my two Franciscan stamps, the Herbon monestery on the left and Francis of Assissi's on the right:

I stopped in for the pilgrims mass, but couldn't really get into it.  All the seats were taken so I was sitting on the base of a pillar.  I was standing when he congregation stood and sitting when they sat, but then someone moved into my seat during one of the standing bits, so I left to do this:

The roof tour is the coolest thing to do in Santiago.  A guide takes you up 115 stairs and gives you a tour from the roof of the cathedral.  It takes a while to get used to the slant.  If you are ever in Santiago this is a must.  Plus there is a discount for pilgrims.

I bought some bread and cheese and headed for a picnic dinner with a view:

Now I know that the ratchett tower is the one being cleaned and repaired. The bell tower and facade will be next, followed by the clock tower and aspe dome, and lastly the cloister towers.

It is kind of cool to walk around this city and hear the different churches chime the time.  I think it is something I will miss when I get home.

My home while in Santiago is here:

After climbing the hill it is only 70 steps up to my floor.

I Have Arrived

The Portuguese route people met in front of the cathedral this evening.  Most went to dinner together, but Cate and Challa are vegetarian, so we went elsewhere.  My Italian sisters walk on to Finisterre tomorrow.  Their friends, another Italian and a French man, joined us. It was a good end to the Caminho.

If you do this walk, the albergue (now we are in Spain it is pronounce al-BER-goo) at Herbon IS NOT TO BE MISSED.  Once the doors opened Paco, the host, gave a long speech in Spanish.  Nu-Nu, a Portuguese lawyer, translated it as "Now we sign in."  Nu-Nu is left, Paco is right.

The whole evening turned into kind of a Paco and Nu-Nu show, but don't let me get ahead if myself.

Once we were signed in, showered, and done with laundry, Paco said the grounds were open to explore.  While everyone else went to the pond to soak their feet, I went into the cloister and cemetery and church.  The church is locked to the outside, so when I came through the side door I kind of surprised a man there  setting up for the Saint Antoino festival that begins shortly, soon to be followed by the San Benito festival.  I helped him move the electronic votives across the sanctuary.  He, unlike Paco, spoke quite good English.  I wandered the cemetery and cloisters taking photos, then went back to sit with the other ten or so guests.

Before dinner Paco took us on a tour.  There used to be a priest living there that would say a special blessing for the pilgrims.  The Franciscan order pulled him about two months ago.  There is a lot of uncertainty about what will happen to the monestery now that there are no more monks.  It used to be a boarding school and facility for training handicapped children, now a developer has made an offer for the property.  The Catholic church has given the Galician pilgrims association authority to run it as long as they can do so without running a deficit.

Paco showed us the fields where the famous Padron peppers were first cultivated and explained that the monks were a bit naive and allowed nearby Padron to trademark the name of the pepper.  That is why you hear of Paddon Pimentos or Peppers, instead of the more accurate Herbon Peppers.

Pimentos de Herbon growing where they were first cultivated.

On the feast day of St Antonio the whole community attends mass.  It sounded like it was celebrated back to back all day long, then followed by a massive dinner held in the priest's dining hall.

They let the community dine in peace, no one preaches from the built in pulpit (Anders is German and seemed to like getting between the camera and whatever I was trying to shoot).

We returned to have dinner together.  Paco told long, elaborate stories which had all the Portuguese rolling with laughter.  The translation provided by Nu-Nu frequently involved Schnapps as a solution to almost all problems a pilgrim faces.  We shared a bottle of homemade wine, we shared some schnapps, we did the dishes.   The next morning we made our donations and walked on.

Entering Santiago is amazingly anti-climatic.  Walking through subdivision after subdivision is rarely a treat.  I found my way to the cathedral and started wandering around it.  I came around a corner and heard a street musician playing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah".  I had enough sense left to pull out my camera and video it.  It was a perfect way to walk around for my first sight of the main cathedral square.

The line was over an hour long at the Pilgrim's office.  I will have to return tomorrow morning.

My caminho is nearly done.  I wish you all bom caminho or buen camino.

I Met My Family

On the Camino. I was told that you will meet the same people in albergues every night and have meals with them, and stop in the same bars for breakfast with them - that they would become your Camino family.   I met my Camino family in Mos.

My first night in an albergue with other walkers was awful.  A German smoker and I talked while I tried to hurry my laundry drying.  He was doing 40-50 km a day and only had three more days to finish the walk.  We were the only ones without a family, he because of the distance he was walking, me because I had been along the coast.

The next day I stumbled into Mos and Jasmine gave me some food, Cate worried about my feet, the Spanish guys rearranged the laundry rack so I had space for my clothes.  My feet were again discussed at lunch the next day (they really are doing better, actually, than I had expected).  After lunch was the roughest climb of the walk, steep with boulders and sun.  When I made it to the top I immediately flopped down and pulled out my water, the Spanish guy went into the woods and Cate watched the trail.  Chala made it and was given water.  Cate headed back down the trail to find the second Spaniard (although I understand that he is actually Castillian).

Last.night I was like this outside the albergue-

When I heard, "I knew I recognized those feet!"  Jasmine, who had booked a hotel for the night, had come to find company for lunch.

Tonight we are all staying different places - Jasmine at the albergue in Padron, Chala and Cate at the albergue in Teo, and me at the albergue in Herbon - but tomorrow night we will meet in front of the cathedral and go out for dinner to celebrate.

This morning I heard distinctly American accents and met my first Americans, Erica and Aaron, who live on the outskirts of Ballard.

As soon as the route crosses into Spain you start seeing these markers:

The points on the scallop are the direction to walk, the numbers show the km left to Santiago.  It is about 20 km from Padron and Herbon is another one or two from Padron.

This is my home for the night - 

A Franciscan convent where they cook dinner and breakfast for you.  There are no more nuns here and the padre that used to do the special pilgrims blessing left last year.  So far it is me and five Germans waiting for the doors to open at 16:00.  We sit or sleep on the steps or on the grass.  We watch the swallows fly.  We wait, but we do not talk.

Tomorrow - Santiago.

How Camino Oriented Are They Here?

I've seen these in a couple of cities since my first day in Spain:

The scallop shell is the symbol of the pilgrim.  Pilgrims used to continue from Santiago to the coast and pick up a scallop shell to prove they completed the walk.  There, of course, were vendors that would bring shells inland and sell to pilgrims.  One of the guys in Portugal gave me a shell and told me to wash it.  He said that to stop the cheating the officials in Santiago would ask the pilgrims to bring their shell back from the coast and they would stamp it with the cross of St James.  Today we gather stamps in our credential proving that we have walked at least 100 km, but there are still cheats who take a  bus or taxi,

Jasmine was one of the first ones out of the albergue this morning andi is a fast walker.  She said she passed a certain pair seven km from Caldas del Reis, when one of them was still in the albergue when I left 45 minutes after Jasmine.  So they not only passed me and Jasmine without either of us seeing them, they also walk faster than one of the fastest people on the trail.  There are lots of stories from the pilgrims about people lying to get their pilgrim certificate.  That has always confused me.  That is basically lying to God, isn't it?  And isn't that usually considered a bad idea?

Saint James is often depicted as a pilgrim with a staff and a gourd for water, see:

Caldas del Reis is nice.  The albergue is kind of a dump, but is on the stream.

Today was an easy 23 km.  I was showered and done with laundry before 3 pm.  There are two more easy days, about 44 km total, to go.