May 10, 2025, Santiago de Compastella

Everything was wet from the rain the night before, the sky’s were gray and it felt as it could rain any anytime. We set out around 9:00 for our final day of walking, I had thought of getting up early enough to set out before the sunrise so that I could see that on my final day, but with the rain the night before I seemed that sunrise would not e that memorable. There was no breakfast at our hotel so we needed to find something while walking. The day would provide 5 uphill climbs and only 2 of those would be longer.

We walked to San Paul before stopping for breakfast in a very crowded little cafe and looking at a restored little church. This got one of our big climbs out of the way. The trail was full of pilgrims as multiple Caminos had converged. It was a long walk just to get past the airport, after it, we walked down to an underpass. Using the underpass as shelter, there were 2 men selling waxed sello and another man playing the bass which sounded good in the acoustics of the underpass.

We walked to Monte de Gozo which is 4.9 km from Santiago, supposedly on a clear day you can see the cathedral, but I could not make it out in the large city.

We walked down into Santiago and made our way through the city following the markers. At one point I lost sight of the markers and it took a little to figure which way to go. We bumped into Frank and Irene as they were also walking there at the same time. Then from a distance I could see the spires. We continued in that direction until they were no longer visible due to the city closing in around us.

There were many impressive structures, and then we came to a small plaza and at the point I could see one of the spires, we were very close. I could now hear the bagpipes and a musician was standing in a corridor playing Celtic bagpipes although he was having difficulty with his reed.

As we emerged from the corridor we were now in the plaza in front of the cathedral. We marveled at the structure and the completion of the walk. It was time for pictures, we took our own, we helped others by taking their pictures and they took pictures of us. I was able to see a number of people that I had not seen for days. We spent about an hour just taking it all in.

We headed to our hotel to check in, and then we headed to the pilgrim office to check in and get our compastella to commentate our journey. We had a celebratory dinner reservation at 8:00 with a few drinks at a nearby bar before.

Tomorrow we will see the nearby museums and visit the cathedral. At the cathedral we will see the bones of St James and give his statue an embrace as so many millions of pilgrims have done before us.