France 2024 – Camino de Santiago Day 7 – Santiago de Compostela

We have come this far, so we now have to complete the ritual of El Camino. 

First, we had to come to the Centro Internacional de Recepción al Peregrino to register our trip and our arrival to Santiago de Compostela, where we received the compostela (an impressive certificate in Latin recording our route and arrival date). Then we went to the cathedral to attend la Misa del Peregrino, when after the service the pilgrims are blessed. One of the big parts of the ritual is the burning on incense in the big botafumeiro (incense burner), which hangs from a very long rope from the dome of the church and is put in swinging motion by a cofradía of 5 or 6 men, who enthusiastically pull at the rope to give the botafumeiro more and more impulse, until it is swinging across the church as the best piñata you have ever seen (me, I would be more sober in the swinging, to give it more gravitas).

After the mass you line up to visit the sepulcre of Santiago, which contains an ornate silver urn with the bones of the apostle, and to embrace his statue. Afterward you can gawk at the cathedral, which is very beautiful, and then ... you are done. Time for a little refreshment, which I used to visit the Museum of the Pilgrimage and Chrissy used to get lost shooting pictures of everything under the sun.

In the afternoon the grand event was to return the rental bikes (all but mine, because I still have two days to go), and pay a visit to a supermarket to buy the Spanish products one cannot get at home (e.g., saffron, a tin of callos a la Madrileña, a tin of pig's ears in tomato sauce, and Spanish pimento powder).

I am definitely deflated, spent the afternoon reading, and went to bed early. Chrissy and Raimund chatted late into the night, which reminds me that these two seem to never run out of things to talk about. Now, Chrissy speaks in short, elegant sentences. Raimund, in contrast, speaks in long, never-ending paragraphs (in German the verb comes at the end, so it is possible to build a very long and complicated sentence without the fear of being interrupted because nobody has any idea what you are talking about until you reach the end). Raimund has mastered this technique and is able to string 5 or 10 of these never-ending sentences, without taking a breathing pause between them, or using commas or periods to provide inflection. It is a Niagara Falls of words!