Blogs from Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain, Europe - page 13

Route: O Pedrouza to Santiago de Compostela Just a brief note for now: I have arrived in Santiago de Compostela. Difficult to describe my emotions: gratitud, satisfaction, happiness on the one hand, sadness on the other hand because the adventure comes to a close. Hard to grasp that I just finished walking almost 800 km and that it really ends here and that on monday I will be traveling back to Venezuela to be with Margarita, who I have been missing terribly here since my arrival.I will keep you posted on other things that may occur while I am here.... read more

Buenos Dias, Domingo, and it is going to be a special day with the final 20km. I have walked even more than the 800km because I went back a town for someone in the early stages. No taxis or busses and carried my pack every day! In Santiago I might even weigh it! Yesterday was great as I found John again, the chap from Glastonbury who sees things in a remakably similar way to me. I would love to go and do one of his courses in astrology and astromony. I feel so fortunate today to also have Petra from Rotterdam to walk with. She is here before travelling to Australia before the end of the year. Just in case I manage to forget there is a website called helpx.net that I heard of yesterday. Similar ... read more

Slept in a bit later...I had a headache all night.....combination of wine beer and lack of water... After showering we went and got some breakfast...wondered around the shops... kept getting drawn back to the square We went to the midday church service mainly to see the Botafumeiro swing.....We saw Tony and Clare which was great....I didn't think we would see them again.....we sat together for the service then Craig from Sydney walked in.....he still had his pack on so guessing he had just made it....He came and sat for awhile then gave his seat up for a old lady....that was the last we saw of him We sat through a hour long service in Spanish and they didn't swing the Botafumeiro......went and spent more time wondering we were a bit lost really.....Jacqui wandered back into the ... read more

We had no intentions to go to Santiago, but Liz brother Hugo said, what you go to Spain and do not go there? We found out that Santiago was declared the third holiest city after Rome and Jerusalem. Pilgrims go there by foot from all over the world even from America but that involves flying or swimming. That explains the bag packers all over the south of France on foot direction Santiago. The reason for this is St james. He was one of the disciples of Jesus and was killed by Herodus on his return to Judea, in the year 44. His remains supose to be underneath the cathedral. The legend goes that a star pointed to his grave in the ninth century and after more ghostly sightings his remains turned up in Santiago via an ... read more

I signed off quite quickly at the end of the last blog and I hadn´t quite finished what I was going to write. This was because I had had so much to catch up on that I forgot the time! Monica came to find me and told me that it was 10pm and long past our usual bed-time of 9pm! I´ll try to continue on from where I left the blog last time. Apologies for failing to upload the photos. We keep trying but with little success. We will try to get them all on eventually but it may have to be after we get home!! O´Cebreiro (continued) Pat and I wondered what had happened to our back packs as they didn´t seem to have arrived at the Albergue (Monica, sensibly, had carried her´s). We rang ... read more