Friday, July 24: Santiago de Compostela

Carola: I was supposed to do this yesterday but it was a pretty full day and I was just too tired. I’m going to back up to Thursday for a minute and address how it was for me to finally enter Santiago.
We left our pension early on Thursday for our final walk. There were several pilgrims turned away as it was completely full, but there were also several in the hallway as we were leaving, and we wondered if they slept in the hall! Turns out they had just moved all their stuff out of the room and were re-packing. We wondered how you got all your stuff together when you had such a small space to work from. Our stuff is always all over our room.
Once on the trail it was business as usual, but I didn’t think it would ever end! We ran into crowds, which got you to thinking about finishing that last cup of con leche.
We did see many pilgrims peel off into the woods(some not far enough), and we didn’t want to go there. We got to a beautiful monument that Ana posted yesterday and saw our first glimpse of commercialism. People had a booth set up selling lots of memorabilia that you would have liked to buy but didn’t want to carry. We stopped at around the 10 km left to Santiago mark and had lunch. Once again a huge booth of stuff to purchase along with a guy taking pictures of you if you wanted to put on the cape, hat and hold the staff similar to St. James. Ugh, my heart was sinking! I know this is how people make their living, but somehow I just felt like we were becoming cattle.
Oh well, onto finish our walk. We finally saw the huge city of Santiago with all the things big cities have. We stopped and had our picture taken as we entered the city. It was an exciting moment!

We walked what seemed forever(guess I was a bit anxious) and finally entered the old city and funneled into the tube-like roads along with other pilgrims. There were people playing bagpipes as we entered the tunnel, and they sounded beautiful. We rounded the corner and saw the cathedral partially covered due to cleaning. A huge sound system was blaring and a little Disneyland train was loading up for some sort of tour. Pilgrims were everywhere cheering for others as they entered the square. It was quite moving. We were so happy to finally arrive.

Ana already posted our day, so I will now go to Friday. We went to the pilgrim office at 7:45am for the 8:00am opening. There were about 20 pilgrims already in line. It moved rather quickly, due to there were eight people working in the office servicing pilgrims. As our turns came up, I got a little nervous. I don’t know why. Just wondering if I could screw this up somehow. We all got our compostela and purchased tubes to put them in for safe keeping.

Our next goal was to go to the pilgrims mass and hopefully see the botafumeiro swing.
We arrived at 11:00am and met half of the California cousins – Hayes. Keith had walked onto Finistera. A spry nun led us in singing before mass and had the voice of an angel. The service was packed, but they had special places for pilgrims to sit so we had a great seat.

Before the service a person read the different places pilgrims started their journey. Hayes, who is a Spanish teacher in Oregon, said they called out Americans from Irun
We think a cardinal was leading the service but not sure. There were probably 10 priests in the procession. The priest we met along the way was an honorary guest priest and that was so cool seeing him there with the others. The organ was huge and unbelievably beautiful. After the service it was announced that the botafumeiro would swing at the 7:30 pm mass. We were a bit disappointed but certainly would be there along with many others.
We spent the rest of the day shopping and looking at sites. The church had sent out huge people to stand in the square.
We returned to the church at 5:30pm, and it was already packed but we were lucky and got our regular seat. What we didn’t know was there was a 6:00pm mass, so we got to take communion for a second time! After the mass nobody left! Everyone there knew the swinging was going to take place at 7:30 and there was apparently a huge line to get in just for standing room only. They closed the doors and many people were left outside only to hope to see the swinging Saturday. A magnificent choir started off the mass. We could have stayed all night listening to them sing. They had a young girl singing soprano and we’ve never heard anyone so perfect. The male conductor was very animated. I’m not sure if Yudi, Ana and I were watching him because of that or because he was a great looking man!
Once the service was over they brought out the incense for the big swing! In the beginning of every service they announce many times “absolutely no photos or videos!” The robed men untied the huge rope and the botafumeiro was loaded. Smoke poured out and it was hoisted into the air and given a huge push. The men pulled on the rope and it started up. I’ve never seen cameras whip out so fast!! It was like the paparazzi! Awesome is about the only word to describe it and that doesn’t ever adequately describe how magnificent it was for all pilgrims there. It was finally the event we had been waiting for and it was worth the wait!

After the mass we were starving. We had a linner earlier with Hayes around 1pm before he headed out. It was now 8:30pm. We will miss seeing our California friends! We went to a wonderful, beautiful restaurant in a garden that Hayes recommended. It was quite chilly by this time and the waiter brought us blankets before taking our order! We roamed around a bit after dinner, but the square was blocked off because it had reached its capacity for people. Amazing, as that place is huge and there were still tons of people on the streets. We headed back to the hotel and ended our awesome day!