Portugal El Camino - 2016

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September 29th 2016

Published: September 29th 2016

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Luv2Walk

My signed certificate of completion Compostela

Day 36 – September 28, 2016 - Santiago de Compostela, Spain – Rest Day – 0 Miles

Enjoying one of our two rest days in Santiago. First thing we did this morning was to go and get our Compostela stating we had completed the Portuguese El Camino. Next we headed to the cathedral where we went in and put our hands on St James shoulder. After that we made our way back to our hotel to enjoy some breakfast.

After breakfast we headed back to the cathedral where we attended the Pilgrims mass at noon which was standing room only. We were very fortunate to get to see the swinging of the giant incense burner Botafumeiro which was totally amazing. The swinging of the Botafumeiro was originally used to fumigate the sweaty and possibly disease ridden pilgrims.

After mass we stopped for a drink before doing some window shopping. Once I completed my window shopping I returned to the hotel where I could work on trying to bring my blog up to date which turned out to be a real challenge as the internet was not working well so needless to say it did not happen.

Harlan

Harlan, Karen, Julian and Moira getting their signed certificate of completion Compostela

had received an email from Ayako (the young Japanese lady we met on our first day of walking the El Camino) earlier stating she would be in town around 5 pm. So he invited her to join us for dinner.

As we were having a beer waiting on the restaurant to open, I turned around and there on my left side was the Italian girl Ayako had walked with earlier in the Camino. As soon as they saw each other, they both let out great big screams and hugged each other. Ayako ended up not going with us to dinner but stayed and visited with the Italian girl. We changed restaurants and enjoyed a very good dinner.

On our way back to the hotel we passed by some tapa bars which I took a couple photos of the food. Right before we got to our hotel we ran into three of the gals from Florida that we had met on the El Camino who were headed back to their room for the night.

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