With the exception of Raffael, who needed to catch a 6:45am bus, nobody was in a hurry to get out of bed this morning. We had nowhere to walk today. Our Caminos were over. The epilogues to our Caminos were over. Our gratuitous extra walks after the epilogues after the Caminos were over. And the weather outside was dreadful. Thank goodness the hostel didn’t have a resident hospitalero to throw us out at the crack of dawn. If only it had heating in the mornings…
At around 9:00am, after the young man with the orange rucksack cover and the Spanish family with umbrellas had packed and left, I turned on the lights. Marco, Lucia, and I packed our bags and wandered down to the nearest cafe. It seems Lucia had a bad reaction to the shellfish we ate for her birthday dinner, so she ordered camomile tea, while marco and I tucked into eggs and bacon. I will have to scale down my appetite now that I am no longer walking 20km or more per day. The weather outside was getting worse and worse.
The next bus to Santiago was not due until 2:30pm so marco and Lucia dug in for a long stay at the cafe. Since I hadn’t yet seen the small chapel at the top of the town, I ventured out into the rain and captured a few photographs. When I returned after an hour and a half, I was soaked. I changed into my running base layer and my only dry T-shirt before tucking into a plate of sardines.

Tonight we are at a beautiful AirBnb only 50m from the cathedral. Tomorrow I’ll try to capture some scenes from Santiago, including the famous incense burner at the midday mass. It’s the feast of the immaculate conception – a feast day and a national holiday in Spain – so I hope they’ll pull out all the stops for tomorrow’s mass.