At 12.3 miles, this was one of the shorter walks of our Camino. After 12 days of walking, it seemed like a “piece of cake”. So we didn’t rush off from Pension Arca – we had a somewhat leisurely breakfast, which was included with the room – this time the toast was basically Wonder Bread (for you Minnesotans out there), but we …. We met a woman from Santa Fe who was walking the Camino, but also attending the WOMEX festival being held in Santiago starting October xx. She is a volunteer for the public radio station in Santa Fe. And we admired her so much because she brought her own Melitta “pour-over” filter and coffee. She admitted that she was a little fussy about her coffee, so we could confess that we were fussy too – and told her about Greg and my years-long coffee habit at work.
Before heading out, I asked Greg to take a pic of me in my favorite t-shirt:
And we took a shot as we took out first steps on our last day of walking:
Again, with no planning, we ran into our friends Kasha and Luda as we were heading out! We walked with them, and Dorota caught up with us eventually too.
Stayed at Pension Lusco Fusco (I paid via credit $198.11)
Total Walked: 19.18k (12.3 miles)
We checked into the pension, took a little break, and then walked to the Cathedral square.
Laurie let us know that the “incense-thing” was going to be part of the 7:30 mass, so we decided to meet them there. We had heard initially that they only did it at the 12:00 pilgrim mass on Fridays, but then we heard that as long as someone pays the 300 euros, they will do it additionally. It was amazing as I remember from 1999, the first time I was in Santiago with John and our friends Duke, LaDes, Rick and Mary Jo. I liked the way the little video turned out too. Attending mass is always an education for me because I never really know what’s going on. I kept leaning over and asking Greg (catholic) to explain.
We then went out for drinks and tapas with our friends, and THEN onto xxx for the fire drink thing. (add more here). We got a little lost on the way back, but asked for help and got it from a nice young man who pointed us in the right direction. From that point, we made sure we knew the landmarks to get us back home. We missed the familiar yellow arrows pointing the way!
THE UNREACHABLE ITCH 