Santiago

I was going to make a post when I arrived last night, but I forgot. Yesterday was a very, very long day; almost 11 hours on my feet. It was the first time I'd walked at night and the misery of the last hour and a half was practically surreal. It was pouring. 

I checked into the first reasonable looking B&B I walked past after entering the heart of the old city at 8 o'clock and ended up in a fantastic place called Casas Reais. 

I lied down for an hour and then went the 200 or so yards to the cathedral. 

I then moved on and had some tapas before heading home, but before I got there I ran into most if the gang that I had met the first day in Spain (last day in France) outside a bar smoking. The Boinga girls (Terri and Kirsten) were there as was Amir from Iran,Nick the young Canadian, Maria from Germany and a few others. 

Six weeks ago, before I even reached Bordeaux, I had met a girl named Sabine who was the only person I knew of that was walking the Tours route all the way to SdC. She actually started from her grandfathers house a couple of days northeast of Tours and had a very cool walking stick. I'd lost track of her after a day or two and was regretting not exchanging contact information with her. About 20km into yesterday's walk, Sabine passed me. I recognized her from her stick!  I actually knew she wasn't far behind me because a Polish girl named Anka had told me that she was walking with someone named Sabine from Paris who had come down with food poisoning at an albergue. Sabine & Anka hadn't exchanged contact info and Sabine thought Anka had probably finished days ago because she's a very fast walker. But this morning when I went to get my "compostela", I had the pleasure of seeing them reunited!