We made it to Santiago just in time to attend the Pilgrims mass so we held off checking into our hotel. There is something spiritually fulfilling about attendance at mass at any time but upon the completion of a 100 kilometer walk with other pilgrims, it is extra special. I am also humbled at the thought that there have been millions of pilgrims before me that have completed this journey and sat in these pews over more than 1000 years. This may also be the only mass where during the portion where we wish each other peace, people are saying “Buen Camiño” instead.

The way here is mostly forest once you are out of Patron and one is treated with the scent of eucalyptus as the trees grow wild all over the mountains of Galicia and are a favorite of the logging industry. Santiago is actually a small

Town of only 100,000 but a tourist hub. Joe and I sat in mass with a bus load of Asians. I believe that they were all Catholic because the lady next to me was following along with the responses to the priest in her own language. That’s OK because I was doing the same.

Our hotel here in Santiago is a converted Monastery. It is a giant stone building that educated priests and monks for centuries. The solidity of the structure was important because to have Joe and me enter sacred ground would have brought down a lesser structure.

Once checked in, we picked up our luggage and took ourselves to lunch. A Galician soup for each of us. Joe had the mussels and I had the Merluza (Hake). A little touristy shopping and an afternoon rest for us both.

Tomorrow we have a bus tour of Fisterre or Finisterre. This is the “end of the earth” that some pilgrims would walk to during the dark and Middle Ages as they believed it to be where the flat earth met the sea. Modern science and the Portuguese have long since proven that they have a point that juts farther to the west but the Spanish tourism industry pays no attention to that.