Day 33 – The one with going home

Either the dinner yesterday after the sunset was a bit too much or it was some excitement about getting home soon but I spent most of the night awake.

Around 6 I started to get ready as the bus left at 6:45.

My phone once again started being weird with the data connection not working and with flickering screen but it fixed itself shortly after the bus arrived to Santiago.

The bus took more than 2 hours and it was quite cold. On arrival it was only 4 degrees in Santiago.

I talked with a Lithuanian guy who did the French way. He just started a year long break with the Camino and planned to travel to East.

I wondered around Santiago looking for souvenirs and eating this and that 🙂 Finally I settled on the square next to the cathedral where the sun shined and one could see all the pilgrims arriving and meeting each other. In fact I met with la German guy who I last saw at least a week ago.

An Estonian girl asked me to take take her picture and as she was just going to go to Finisterra and Muxia I recommended her some places and helped her with the bus schedule.

After bumping into the Lithuanian guy again I went on to have lunch: I set my eyes on the market with some kiosks offering meals when I first got to Santiago so now I tried one of them. One with octopus.

I sat a little more in the sunshine then headed to the airport with the bus. Time to go home.

Day 29 – The one with the first end

Although I was only 20k from Santiago I wanted to start early to avoid “rush hour”. So I sad goodbye to Maria – this time most likely for good – and left the hostel around 7. Jeremy decided to tag along and so with a very good pace we were looking for a breakfast place.

Maybe because there was none exactly on the way – and yes, after 800+ kms a 100m off the way is still a distance that one would not want to walk … – or we were in a good rhythm, or maybe because we were kinda running away from all the people on the way, we only stopped after more than 15k at Monte de Gozo, way after passing by the Santiago airport.

Here we agreed that we’ll meet in the afternoon and I went ahead – we both wanted to arrive alone so Santiago.

Around an hour later I arrived. Went around the cathedral a couple of times as I was surprised that it is not allowed to go in with backpack and there was no place to leave it. So I went for my compostella that took an hour.

I’ve also caught up with Lukazs which was a nice surprise.

After checking in the hostel I went back to the cathedral and then walked a little bit around the old town. As nice the town could be, as annoying the amount of people was for me. Starting to understand why 3 days of Camino Frances is recommended before arriving to Santiago: need time to adjust…

Did some groceries and then went on to meet with Jeremy and Lukazs for dinner. Once again we had churros con chocolate but this time not to get energy for the road but for the pleasure only 🙂

We visited the evening pilgrims’ mess where we I saw once again one of the Lithuanian guys and we got to see the big pot(?) filled with incense being swung that was traditionally to overcome the smell of the pilgrims. Looked majestic though.

I sad goodbye to Jeremy as well. When I started and got to chat with the Spanish veteran camino guys I never thought that I’ll be the one out of the people whom I got to know on the camino to go furthest and quickest. Not that I was racing I just didn’t I could keep up and/or keep on going.

Prepped myself some food for continuing the next day and got to sleep early which was a first in some time.