Day 27 - To Santiago

Taxi at 9 am arrived on time. Our host told us if we waited to call for taxi in am it would have been 3-4 hours to get one. We beamed with pride because we had planned ahead.

Elise and Elizabeth from the Netherlands and Joan and I had the taxi driver drop us off at a cafe near Camino halfway. We enjoyed coffee with the ladies and then geared up for our walk into Santiago.

We had been receiving what’s app updates from our faster pilgrim friends and we were getting very excited seeing the pictures of the Cathedral and their arrival into Santiago.

Our word for today is Satisfaction. It fits us. We feel no angst for it being over and proud of what we have done. We are truly satisfied with our journey.

Rain has lessened a bit as we walked into Santiago completely soaked to the bone. We immediately took our picture in front of the Cathedral and bumped into several pilgrim friends. Some we had been with these past few days and some we had not seen in a few weeks. It was special.

But, a Pilgrim has work to do. We had to go get our official compostela certificate at the pilgrims office. It was a pretty smooth process to register, and then we had a short interview process where we had to show our credential and our stamps along our journey confirming our start and stop points for our certificate.

We had to have the lady roll up our certificates as our hands were still wet and we were dripping from head to toe.

We hit Kenzie’s favorite Italian place for our celebratory beer and some very good Italian. We found our hotel, showered and short siesta.

We attended the Cathedral mass at 7:30 pm. The church was packed and it was a beautiful mass and they celebrated the Botafumeiro, which was a treat, and you can see in video.

We found a sushi place for dinner. Our first sushi of the trip. We decided to stay another day in Santiago as there is so much to explore and some close pilgrim friends will arrive tomorrow.

We personally walked 516 km / 321 miles in 29 days. We have been doing the Camino, “our Way”. Meaning we walk into every small church, we take detours, pics of everything, talking with fellow pilgrims, staying in private rooms and hotels with bathrooms- our Camino! We have loved every step.

As of this minute we are thinking of continuing on to the coast - Muxia and Finisterre and walking another 30km. We will keep you posted.

We won’t return home until Nov 6th, but we have traversed over 790 km / 500 miles on foot, taxi, bus, train - on the Camino Frances route. We personally walked 516 km / 321 miles… on our “Camino our way” in 29 days. That is almost 12 miles a day / 19km.

The walk into Santiago today was a meaningful and special ending to our journey. Thank you for your support and love and appreciated all of your comments.

We still owe you pictures from days 1-2 (too tired to post, and never had time to finish the updates) over the Pyrenees mountains and a few edits to make. Thanks for following us.

Buen Camino!Read more