Santiago de Compostela

We will be staying 4 nights in our hotel here in Santiago.  We have had to pack up our bags every morning for the past 35 days, now we and our bags get to stay put for a few days. Yeah!  We are staying at the Costa Vella hotel located in the heart of the historical part of town. It is well known for its gardens, which are beautiful now and I can imagine even more beautiful in the Spring & Summer. We slept in to 8am this morning...we never do that back home, but it felt great!  The rooms here all have shutters on the inside of the windows so when you close them up for the night it's pitch black.

This morning after breakfast we went to the church of San Francisco. We found out that it was 800 years ago that Saint Francisco came to Santiago.  This year the church is giving out a special certificate to pilgrims commemorating the anniversary.  Lee and I both received one this morning.  Afterwards we did a little more browsing and shopping before the noon Pilgrims Mass.  I am glad we went today as we were able to sit in the center section facing the alter.  We also got a chance to see some other pilgrims we had walked with at one time or another along the route.  Pictured below is Lee and I with the 20 year old Swiss girl who walked to Santiago all the way from Geneva, Switzerland! Also pictured is Lee and a woman from Japan that we met along the way. The comaraderie is fantastic as we all had something in common and we were all striving for the same goal. "The goal is the journey itself and the journey is the true experience of life". Besides walking, we ate with each other, we helped and cared for each other, we told stories to each other, we learned about each other and we laughed and cried with each other,  We bonded and formed friendships; some of us will keep in touch and some won't. It's all the metifore of life.

We are back at our hotel room now resting, our legs are still tired from walking.  It rained hard, hailed, thundered and lightening this afternoon.  Tomorrow we are taking a bus tour out to Finisterre "The End of the Earth" or so it was known centuries ago before men sailed past the horizon and found the New World. Stay tuned tomorrow!