Recovery Day: Santiago

Today, we did a rest day. Last night, we had a great mass at the Cathedral and dinner with our New Zealand camino friend Ceri.

A highlight is the pilgrims' evening mass where many of the 2000+ pilgrims that finish during the day come to mass at the chapel. We went 45 minutes early and could only find one seat in the pew, so I sat on one of the column bases. It was packed. The service was mainly in Spanish and had the pilgrim blessings in English, Italian, Portuguese, and German. They had communion and only gave out the bread. It was interesting to see people from all over the world coming to take the wafer from the priest in their own traditional way, kneeling, asking for the bread in their hand or mouth, or just getting a blessing. The unexpected main event is the Botafumeiro. I had never seen this in person, but there is a large silver urn type incense container that gets lowered by rope, and the priest puts burning incense in the container. They claim that it is the largest in the world. They have 8 guys that pull the ropes, and then a guy I will call the 'designated athlete' swings his body and hurls the container overhead to one side. Then the rope pullers in rhythm pull in the ropes, and it launches it back and forth across the two side transcripts of the cathedral. We were on the side, and it looked like it swung 40 feet in the air above us while smoking out incense and filling the room with smoke.

One of the nuns was singing along with the organ, and it made it quite a cool spectacle. Evidently, they have not been doing it often due to cost, but if you pay 600 euros, they will do it during the mass. We presumed one or more of the groups paid to have it done.

Tara took a picture at the very end that you can see, but they told us not to video or take photos, so I kept my phone in my pocket. I counted at least 50 others with their phones out, so I will share a link where you can see the event play out. It was impressive and quite a blessing to see this unique tradition. I guess they had all of these smelly pilgrims, and this practice not only constituted a sacrifice of a fragrant aroma to God but also counteracted the not-so fragrant aroma of the pilgrims. We can relate.

https://youtu.be/rsrqkYQvpr4?si=-9qw_oI8AYdZ3WX7

Today, we slept in and licked our wounds before heading off for a walking tour of Santiago. It has some cool history, and we learned some interesting facts. One fact is the city has just about 100,000 inhabitants. During the school year, the city adds about 35k university students. Tourism from the pilgrims, university students, and the government (it is the Galicia capitol) make up most of the city's base.

After lunch with our friend Ceri, we went back inside the cathedral, shopped, and did laundry (since we only have 3 sets of clothes, we do laundry a lot!), and prepared for our early flight to Barcelona.

Goodbye to Galicia, and hello to Catalonia.Meer informatie