MeganG22
Active Member
- Time of past OR future Camino
- SJPdP-->SdC
(Oct3-Nov3 2012)
Pamplona-->SdC
(Oct1-Oct29 2014)
Upcoming!
Pamplona-->SdC
May 1-? 2017
This is an excerpt from an email I wrote to my mother on November 3rd, a few hours after our arrival in Santiago. I wanted to share it here because maybe it will spark some memories in the rest of you about any magical days you had on your walk. I have been thinking about the Camino almost nonstop since I came home, I feel slightly crazed. And I know people will understand that.
(I apologize for the length.... if you want to leave a long response to get back at me, I understand
"SANTIAGOOOOO. We have arrived! We did a huge day today- about 23 miles- and ended in Santiago de Compostela around 6:45pm. Crazy that we´re here and it´s complete and we feel awesome! It was very strange too... this day started off pretty bad, it was very rainy and dreary and for the first hour it was DARK, despite being past 8am. However, eventually the rain stopped and we made it the rest of the 20 kilometers being dry. At the beginning of the day we had not decided where we end up- whether we would go the whole way or stay somewhere to enter the city fresh in the morning. However, it's us, and being the stubborn folks we are, you could have guessed what we were going to do.
Santiago is like any of the other big towns we´ve been in- when you think you´ve entered the city you find a map that says you´re actually 3-4 kilometers away from your destination. So we keep walking and then hear some people saying "peregrinos, peregrinos!" and whistling us over to them. They have a huge roaster which looks like a BBQ and they are roasting chestnuts. They give us a little glass of wine and two big paper cones filled with roasted nuts and explain that at this time of year they have gatherings in parks and other places to roast nuts with their neighbors. What a nice welcome to the city.
We decided a few hours before that that if we were going all the way to Santiago, we were going ALL the way into the city and touching the Cathedral, not just finding somewhere along the outside to stay. When we make it to the side of the Cathedral we see a man named Grant (who we have not seen since Burgos, very early on) just standing off to the side and we have a nice reunion. And he tells us that the place he´s standing in front of has rooms and a lot of people are there, etc. And we see a couple other people we recognize and everyone is hugging and shaking hands and congratulating each other.
We go see if the place has rooms, and they do, and we get a private room, and when we go up to our floor, there´s a whole group that we know, including Steve! And then we wander around a little and just keep seeing all these people from the past few weeks and everyone is happy and glad to see each other. It was really nice. We also saw a man named Simon- we had walked with him a day or two prior to Burgos, before he developed some foot issues and stayed behind and we were convinced we would never see again.
I´m not necessarily saying it was kismet or anything spiritual, but everything just really worked out the last hour and a half of our day and it was all almost like an incredible gift... And now we´re here!"
Just reading this again I am emotional about it all! It was truly an outstanding end to my Camino and I hope I hold onto these memories forever. We had joked for days before about how our end would be like a movie, and all the people we had met the whole five weeks prior would magically be in Santiago when we arrived. We never would have dreamed that it would actually happen! Oh I am so ready to do it all again.
(I apologize for the length.... if you want to leave a long response to get back at me, I understand
"SANTIAGOOOOO. We have arrived! We did a huge day today- about 23 miles- and ended in Santiago de Compostela around 6:45pm. Crazy that we´re here and it´s complete and we feel awesome! It was very strange too... this day started off pretty bad, it was very rainy and dreary and for the first hour it was DARK, despite being past 8am. However, eventually the rain stopped and we made it the rest of the 20 kilometers being dry. At the beginning of the day we had not decided where we end up- whether we would go the whole way or stay somewhere to enter the city fresh in the morning. However, it's us, and being the stubborn folks we are, you could have guessed what we were going to do.
Santiago is like any of the other big towns we´ve been in- when you think you´ve entered the city you find a map that says you´re actually 3-4 kilometers away from your destination. So we keep walking and then hear some people saying "peregrinos, peregrinos!" and whistling us over to them. They have a huge roaster which looks like a BBQ and they are roasting chestnuts. They give us a little glass of wine and two big paper cones filled with roasted nuts and explain that at this time of year they have gatherings in parks and other places to roast nuts with their neighbors. What a nice welcome to the city.
We decided a few hours before that that if we were going all the way to Santiago, we were going ALL the way into the city and touching the Cathedral, not just finding somewhere along the outside to stay. When we make it to the side of the Cathedral we see a man named Grant (who we have not seen since Burgos, very early on) just standing off to the side and we have a nice reunion. And he tells us that the place he´s standing in front of has rooms and a lot of people are there, etc. And we see a couple other people we recognize and everyone is hugging and shaking hands and congratulating each other.
We go see if the place has rooms, and they do, and we get a private room, and when we go up to our floor, there´s a whole group that we know, including Steve! And then we wander around a little and just keep seeing all these people from the past few weeks and everyone is happy and glad to see each other. It was really nice. We also saw a man named Simon- we had walked with him a day or two prior to Burgos, before he developed some foot issues and stayed behind and we were convinced we would never see again.
I´m not necessarily saying it was kismet or anything spiritual, but everything just really worked out the last hour and a half of our day and it was all almost like an incredible gift... And now we´re here!"
Just reading this again I am emotional about it all! It was truly an outstanding end to my Camino and I hope I hold onto these memories forever. We had joked for days before about how our end would be like a movie, and all the people we had met the whole five weeks prior would magically be in Santiago when we arrived. We never would have dreamed that it would actually happen! Oh I am so ready to do it all again.
