October 27th, 2013

Whoa,  it looks as if my last blog somehow got published out of order; that is, my last blog, yesterday´s blog, is located before the day-before-yesterday´s blog, so I imagine nobody found it, but anyway,  if you´d like to see yesteday´s blog (October 26th´s, which you´ll need to read if today´s is to make any sense!), scroll down past October 25th´s blog and there it is.  Does that make any sense? Okay, well,  moving along: although by the end of every afternoon we´re always  dragging and  and slagging along, and the last 4 kms always seem endless, and by the time we´ve come slogging  into the albergue we have no energy for anything except the essentials: showers, laundry, eating and sleeping, still the next morning we always wake up refreshed, renewed, ready to  grab our backpacks and sticks once more and take on whatever the Camino wants to offer us.  So yesterday morning it felt so good knowing that we´d be walking the last 4kms to  Santiago riding high on our morning exhuberance (Sorry, as I said, you´ll need to see the misplaced Oct 26 blog for this and  the following to make any sense!) But do you remember that scene from "Thje Way" where Martin Sheen and his friends stand at the crest of a hill next to a statue of St. James and look down over the panoramic view of the Catherdral of Santiago, its courtyard alive with people?  Well, sorry, but Martin Sheen is so busted!  That scene does not exist on the Camino!  The closest hill to the Cathedral is Monte del Gozo, the  hill down which  the 500-bed xunta barracks (we stayed there -see missed blog for the reason!)  slope and the only edifice you can see from the top of  that hill is the xunta snack bar.  Anyway, when we reached the otherside of Monte del Gozo we were actually within the city limits of Santiago and the 4kms we needed to walk was the distance from Monte del Gozo to the Catheral, located in the old part of the city.  So we breezed through the city along with a few fellow pilgrims - no tourists entering the city here, as they probably wouldn´t be interested in walking by supermarkets, pharmacies and cafe bars .  As we met our fellow pilgrims it felt funny to say "Buen Camino", since we were so close to the end, so we ended up just saying "We´re almost there!", which seemed an appropriately encouraging greeting and was enthusiastically returned.  As we were approaching  the old city a guy jumped out of a car and handed us a leaftlet for a pension near the cathedral.  And when we finally arrived at the cathedral quarter, even though we were so close to our  destination, the Cathedral de Santiago, our first occupation remained  the same as it has been all along:  finding shelter.  As we had no better ideas, we pulled out the leaflet and looked for the pension it advertised.  We followed the directions on the leaftlet until we found the address, where there was no easily visible  sign, just a computer-printed paper stuck on a stone wall next to a big old heavy wooden door behind an iron fence, the paper telling us to go up to the 2nd floor.  We opened  the big old door and stepped into what looked like the entrance way to a castle, all stone floors, walls and pillars.  Past the castle-entrace was a big winding wooden stairway:  think "Hogwarts" from the "Harry Potter" films.  When we´d gone up three flights (In Spain "2d floor" really means "3rd floor") we came to another big wooden door. We rang the bell and the door was answered by the hospitaliera-owner, Julia, who welcomed us into another "Hogwarts" hallway:  stone walls, big heavy wood-framed mirror-coat rack, old, old, wide-planked wooden floors. (Julia later told us that the building was, along with the floors,  300 years old!).   She immediately showed us a cute, bright bedroom that had a french-door that opened onto a balcony over looking a lovely view of the narrow street below.  Tom thought the bedroom had a "Paris 1920´s Hemingway" look, while it seemed to me more like  "Paris 1920´s Heminway meets Hogwarts".  The sitting room looked like an 18th century drawing room full of antique furniture and dishes, flocked pattern wall paper and an aged oriental rug over the wooden floors.  From the drawing room there was a beautiful view of the cathedral.  We were so charmed that we booked the 25 euro room for  the two nights we´d be in Santiago.  Julia then gave us a map of Santiago showing us how to get to piilgrim office for our compostelas, or certificates of completion.  She also showed us how to get away from the expensive, touristy part of town around the cathedral to an area where could find good, cheap food, a pretty park, and a market place where Santiagoens go to shop for the freshest food.  So we stopped by the pilgrim office and received our compostellas then we found a restaurant where the friendly waiter was so eager-to-please that he told us if we didn´t like what we´d ordered we could send it back and he´d bring us something else!  We both ordered one of the daily 6.50 specials that included meal, bread, drink, and coffee.  Tom ordered lasagne and I (still feeling being-in-Spain adventurous) went for squid in its own ink over rice.  We both liked what we ordered. After lunch we swung by a pastry shop for cream-filled puff pastries (heavenly!) which we ate in the pretty park.  Then we checked out the  market place:  Columbus people, think of the North  Market but instead of under one roof set up in long State Fair buildings (only not as long as the State Fair buildings!).  There were crowds of people shopping and eating at the outdoor cafes or crowded along the stand-up bars where they chatted and socialized while drinking and eating pinchas, (small portions, like hors dóeuvres).  It was a neat place.  Finally we headed for the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.  And I just want to clarify that not only can you not enter the cathedral at the grand front entrance by climbing  up the great stone staircase then pass through the massive  wooden doors (which don´t even open anymore, you have to use the side entrance) then put your fingers into the centuries-old indentations on the statue of Saint James then have a really emotional exegesis, all of whichas Martin Sheen and his friends did in the movie, you can´t even get around the gate to see the statue unless you first buy a ticket!  And then you can only look, you can´t touch!  But, of course, I´m just joking around, I don´t  mind about any of that, none of us do; because this pilgrimage has turned out to be not about Santiago, the cathedral, or, for that matter, any one place:  it´s been about the Camino, where we´ve walked hour after hour, day after day, week after week in thoughful solitude in community with each other; it´s been about the friendly, hard-working hospitalieros who´ve given us shelter, food, and clean clothes;  it´s been about the wonderful Spanish people, who´ve smiled, waved, stopped to chat, pointed us in the right direction, and wished us "Buen Camino", even the children walkingn with their parents or riding by on their bikes; and mostly it´s been about our  piilgrim sisters and brothers, friendly, cheerful, respectful, concerned, compassionate, and so much more.  They´ve given us the gift of helping and being helped by others.  And this pilgrimage is about the reason that, in discussions we´ve had with other pilgrims about rumors (all false!) we´d heard of why we might be denied our compostelas (not enough stamps on our passports, giving a wrong answer at the pilgrim office, etc), we´ve all invariably confessed that the compostela wasn´t even important to us anymore, that the document we really cared about was our pilgrim passport, stamped by  each albergue we´ve stayed at and so that it  will be a remebrance of the people and times along the way;  for this journey has been, as all wonderful jouneys are, first and foremost a jouney of the heart.  May all your lives be blessed with a wonderful journey.  Love, Patti 8)
PS - Our pilgrimage is finished, we leave tomorrow for the 6-hour train trip to Madrid, but I´m going to try to write another epilogue or two.  If I can still find a computer!  More love, Patti 8)