This was supposed to be one of the highlights of our trip, as I had read so many wonderful things about how beautiful Santiago was, so I figured this would be a great spot to spend Christmas. My impression now is they just have better marketing people than some of the smaller towns. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a beautiful spot, but I booked 4 days here based on my reading impressions. Salamanca deserved those 4 days much more than Santiago.
We pretty much did everything on the Trip Advisor Top 10 list on the first evening we arrived. They also don’t have a whole lot of Christmas spirit going on, not even a “big box” light show. Our hotel, the NH Collection, which was supposed to be a “10 minute walk” to the historic part of town, was more like 20 minutes, and not exactly the most beautiful walk either (not to mention it was uphill both ways!). The hotel has a restaurant, but they informed us on check-in that they would not be open for Christmas Eve. They did help us with a reservation at another hotel for dinner that night, and I will get to that shortly.
Santiago is centered around two things. The Cathedral, and the Camino de Santiago, otherwise known as The Way of Saint James. The Camino is a pilgrimage for Catholics, with the final spot being the shrine of the Apostle Saint James, in the Cathedral de Santiago. Tradition has it the remains of Saint James are buried here, but it’s just really good marketing, which lives on to this day. Fortunately the pilgrims don’t have a lot of money, so getting into the Cathedral is free. It is a beautiful church, but I think this is our 30th church on this trip, so it’s starting to get repetitive.
The area behind the main altar reminded us of Trump’s house. It’s also undergoing refurbishment to really shine up all of that gold that stole from the natives in South America.
They did have a cool nativity scene set up inside the church. It was huge, very detail oriented, and had many animatronic controlled figurines.
We entered another church, the San Francisco de Santiago, on Christmas Day. It’s normally closed, but they were having a service so we walked in.
They had the cutest little lambs with the kids near the altar.
So on Christmas Eve, we went to another hotel for dinner, and as Kim mentioned at the time, it felt like we were at a bad wedding reception. The only thing missing was a Bridezilla to throw the bouquet. The food was just ok. The hotel was 4 miles from our hotel, so we took a taxi…no Uber or Lyft in Santiago.
By the time we finished dinner it was 11:00, and we asked the hotel to get us a taxi to go back to our hotel. I was even considering going to Midnight Mass at the Cathedral just to take in the spectacle. The hotel called 3 places….but no taxis…maybe try back in a half hour?
So we walked back to our hotel…..4 miles…..in the middle of the cold cold night. Here is a shot of the freeway when we walked over it. Notice any taxi’s?
On the bright side, it turned out we were on a portion of the Camino de Santiago, so now we can say we are officially pilgrims!
How did I know we were on the Camino? The entire way is littered with these scallop shells. Of course, every store in Santiago sells every variation of a scallop shell you could ever think of. Did I mention these people are excellent at marketing themselves?
Oh yeah, there were also these signs that kind of made it clear…..in case you missed the shells. Marketing baby!
