Camino de Santiago Day 30
Day 30: I woke up at 5:30 AM and left the hotel at 6 AM. The first four hours were fairly uneventful (it was dark the first hour and a half and then the usual forest and farmland after the sun had risen). Our hotel was nice enough to leave me a breakfast bag on the front counter that I grabbed prior to departing. I consumed the breakfast bag around sunrise on a nice flat rock in the woods. I continued on a couple hours and met up with Tatiana at the halfway point (she took a bus to O Pedrouzo). After we met up, we had some nice walks through the woods with several climbs. It gradually got warmer and warmer and entered into the 90s again. Around 2 PM, we stopped for lunch at Casa de Amancio in Villamaior. It might just be the extreme hunger, but the pasta with prawns dish there was one of the best I’ve ever had. After lunch we made one more stop at Monte do Gozo, an enormous albergue about 4 km from Santiago that has all kinds of shops and restaurants. As the largest albergue on the camino, we felt we needed to at least see it. We had a craft beer in the brewery there as an early celebration. We then continued on the final 4 km and made it into Santiago de Compostela around 5 PM. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the city, but it far exceeded any expectations. There are dozens of buildings that are a thousand years old and everywhere you look is something interesting and awe-inspiring. The Cathedral de Santiago de Compostela (finished in 1211 AD) is itself a medieval wonder (it is also the location where Saint James the Apostle is buried, hence the Camino de Santiago being The Way of St James). It was exciting to enter the city and see the cathedral I had been walking toward for the last ~500 miles. We stayed in the square under the cathedral a good half hour to hour and took in the cathedral, square, and surrounding buildings. We then decided to drop our bags off at our Marriott hotel, the Hotel Palacio del Carmen, before exploring the city further. Marriott did not disappoint and we got upgraded into a two-bedroom suite. We showered, went to the indoor pool, explored the hotel, and then went to dinner at Anaco. We had several local dishes and it was one of the best dinners of the trip. We then explored the city further, visited some of the ancient cathedrals and plazas, came back to the hotel and went to sleep. It felt great to have accomplished the goal of the trip. However, like the movie The Way, there was still more hiking to do. Since I had come this far across Spain, we planned to continue walking all the way to the ocean.
Distance hiked: 25 miles
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