Santiago in the Sun

Sept.2010 The end of the Camino.

Here I am. Arrived at this city on what would have been my Grandma Kerr’s 102nd birthday is she were with us. I just had a moment. I woke up to a sunny and gorgeous Santiago today. It looks a lot like Florence with its white houses and red roofs. We paid for an extra day at the massive pilgrim dorm so that we could have one day without having to move our stuff and the ability to dry out. We walked to the city around tenish moseying through a great market on our way. My kids liked the Octopus.

We didn’t get our Compostella Certificates because the line-up was too massive. Instead we had a café-con-leche and then went to find some shoes for Kathryn because hers were still soaked form yesterday. We were pointed to the Spanish version of Toronto’s Yorkville with 89 Euro leather boots for toddlers, so we quickly hi-tailed it for a local dollar store for mini-mouse flip-flops.

We had two funny conversations today. Rob talked with a pilgrim from Uganda who was a lawyer whose husband was running for political office. She said she had to walk the Camino or lose her mind;) She was inspired by what we were doing and said God would answer all our needs because we had made such a long journey. Rob said he didn’t know God was into sacrificial bartering.

Then we got stopped in the middle of the street by a German man who crossed the street to shake our hands in congratulations. He had literally been on the Santiago path all the way from leaving his front door in Germany! And yet, he was shaking our hands because he thought that what we had done was unbelievable.
We had lunch on the steps of Santiago Cathedral with donairs and falafel in hand. We got to meet up with a lot of pilgrims who made it here today. The Germans with the bloodblisters had to make their last section on the bus.

The old lady from Chicago who walked all the way from France at eighty-five, The Parisian man who pinched my kids cheeks and called them “pere-kids” for the first time, the retired couple from Germany who are trying to figure out what to do with their retirement, Jules, Paulina, Ashley from Australia, so many wanderers who shared a part of their lives with us over these past ten days. Yesterday I just had my fatigue to offer, but today all I can offer is thanks.