Siesta

On our last day we did 55km to reach Santiago de Compostella. This brought our distance cycled to 2320km.

The last day was really tough mentally, it felt like we just couldn't get there, we thought it would be quite flat but hills just kept popping up :) We never saw Santiago in the distance, eventually I told Colette that its a myth there is no such place! The km markings was also not "acurate" as it indicated the distance to the city and not the cathedral... this was another 5km and we were just so tired :) About 2km from the cathedral we bumped into another Peregrino we knew, when we got first sight of the cathedral she told us many people start crying here... but we just were to tired to feel anything! It was just another ordinary day, there was no one welcoming us or congratulating us... no angels singing :) We had reached a dream so unceremoniously it was disturbing.

We took a photo or 2 and then went queueing for "the final stamp". Whilst standing in the queue I decided to book us in in the nice hotel right accross from the pilgrims office, so we went to shower and sleep and only got the stamp that night.

The next day we went to the Pilgrims mass at noon. This brought some chills to us even though we couldn't understand a word - they read the countries that day's pilgrims came from. It was a big feeling to have completed the journey with such a diverse group of people. At one point people greeted each other and it felt like this was our congratulations. Later the day we bumped into other pilgrims we knew and it was so good.

That night we went for some tapas at an old bar and walked around town. The students were out doing there thing to bag-pipe music and we felt the magic of the city. This morning we saw the apostle's (Santiago a.k.a James a.k.a Jakobus) grave and went to the pilgrims museum. Santiago was a little rainy this morning and its just what it needs to bring out its beauty.

After a little bit of rest we were able to truely enjoy our "victory".

Today we rented a car (what an awesome invention!) and we drove to Porto where we are chilling at a backpackers :) and updating the blog (see pic)