Day 38 - Monday 29th May 2023

Today we'd be staying at the Spanish town of Santiago del Compostela. The excursion for this morning would be a guided tour of this historic town.

The plan was to board the bus at 9am for the short trip down to the town. We had breakfast in the hotel restaurant at about 7:30.

Although it was cloudy, it wasn't raining. Last night's storm was gone but the weather forecast said there was a chance of more showers. So it was hard to know what to take for warmth and rain protection. In the end I decided to just take my spray jacket.

Santiago del Compostela is a famous religious location. It dates back to Roman times and has a very large and very famous cathedral. The cathedral supposedly has the tomb for the apostle St James whose name translates to Sant Iago in Spanish.

Legend has it that St James made a pilgrimage to the Iberian Peninsula after Jesus was crucified to spread the word about Jesus - thereby establishing the Christian religion in what is now Spain. Furthermore, after St James was later executed by the Romans, his body was returned to Spain.

Many people make the pilgrimage to Santiago del Compostela in memory of St James. Originally this was for religious reasons but now non-Christians also make the pilgrimage. To prove that they've made the pilgrimage, they return with a scallop shell that is found here (Galicia).

Pilgrims make the journey by a number of different routes over very long distances. These are known as the Camino Ways. Some of the most common are from Spain, France or Portugal. In fact, to be recognised, it needs to be at least 100km. The objective is to reach the cathedral at Santiago del Compostela.

Our bus reached the town by about 9:15 and Justin led us to the large plaza in front of the cathedral. There were several other tour groups there too.

There were also a number of pilgrims in the plaza. Most were sitting down just looking at the cathedral. They'd walked many hundreds of kilometres to get here and they seemed to be just sitting there taking it all in after so much effort.

Apparently about 200 pilgrims arrive here every day.

Naturally we were busy taking photos of the cathedral, the plaza and the other buildings surrounding this quadrangle. Our guided tour with the local guide wasn't due to start until 10am and so it was an opportunity to find a coffee shop in one of the nearby laneways.

As usual, one of the purposes for going to a coffee shop was to use the facilities. Justin had explained to us that, unlike in Portugal, the Spanish insist that you must buy something before using the loo. He was right. The waitress, who didn't speak English, made it very clear that we had to sit down and order something first.

After we had ordered coffee, I tried again. This time the waitress gave me a coin. I wasn't sure why until I went downstairs only to find I needed to use it to go through a turnstile to get to the bathroom. This was a different experience.

Earlier, Suzy had done further research on the actress Linda Gray who she'd seen last night at our hotel. It turns out that she had been walking the Camino Way. In fact, when we were in the bus this morning, we passed her and her companion in the street walking in the direction of the cathedral.

Back in the plaza, we were waiting for our tour to start when Suzy noticed that she had arrived in front of the cathedral at the conclusion of her pilgrimage.

Our guide started her tour with a long explanation of the history. The entire tour lasted until about 12:30. During that time, she took us to various parts of this historic town including plazas, streets, laneways, shops, etc. She explained each location as we went.

I was amazed about how many buildings and areas there are in this site.

Some people would stay here until the bus pickup at 5pm and so she gave us information about what we could do this afternoon.

Towards the end of the tour, she took us to the main road and showed us where the new town is. She then took us to a large tree-lined park which looks back at the historic area. This was yet another photo opportunity.

After the tour, Justin guided us down laneways to show us places where we could have lunch. We picked one and another couple from our tour group joined us. Suzy and I shared potato croquets and garlic prawns.

The waiter recommended a red wine and we both had a glass. Suzy said it was the best red wine she'd had on the tour.

After lunch, the plan was to go back to the cathedral and look inside. Before lunch the queue had been very long but now there was no queue (just as our guide had suggested). The cathedral is very tall and the decorations around the alter are extraordinary.

Behind the alter, there was a small doorway labelled entrada. We entered and went down a few steps and at the bottom there was a room displaying a silver coffin that supposedly contains the body of St James.

Although we could have stayed in the cathedral area until the bus pickup at 5pm, we decided to catch a taxi back to the hotel at about 3pm.

Rather than going back into the historic town for dinner, we decided to have dinner in the hotel restaurant which, as usual, didn't open until 8:30pm. On our way to the restaurant, we noticed several people from our group who decided to have a meal at the bar.

Once again we had a table next to the window overlooking the pretty view. I decided to go for the special three-course meal. The main course was swordfish but I didn't like it because it was very fatty. The chocolate dessert was delicious.

Suzy ordered just an entree which was a strange blue colour. She ate the prawns but not the rest because it was awful. She told the waitress than she didn't like it but decided not to order anything else.

Between the two of us, we managed to finish a bottle of red wine.

When we came to pay, they didn't charge us for Suzy's meal or most of the wine because Suzy had been unhappy with her meal. Despite these problems, the service was vey good. Then again, perhaps we would have been better off getting a hamburger at the bar upstairs.

It was after 10pm before we got to bed. We really don't like this Spanish tradition of late dinners.