Petersontravels

Since we had 4 days in Santiago, and had pretty much seen most of the town in the first 4 hours, we decided to take some day trips. First up was a trip to Cape Finisterre, which is the “actual” ending point of the Camino de Santiago. It’s an extra 90 km from Santiago, so I think a lot of the pilgrims skip this part, but we did see our share of people there who desperately needed a shower.

The Romans referred to Cape Finisterre as the “end of the world”, and the name is Latin for “end of the earth”. I take my wife to the best places!

So speaking of desperately needing a shower, a recent tradition of the pilgrims has been to burn their shoes and clothing at this site since they have finally finished their trek (they still have to go back to Santiago to buy their scallop tourist shit and visit the supposed ashes of Saint James, but forget about that detail for a second). Apparently this has become such a problem that they have had to post signs asking people not to burn stuff! I love the flaming shoe.

They have a brass shoe mounted to a rock to signify the end of the trip. I would prefer a beer mug…..full….but that’s just me. This is the apparent site of the burning ritual

It does somewhat look like the end of the world, I will give them that.

We drove back to the little fishing village of Fisterra (not to be confused with Finisterra), and had lunch. We then walked along the waterfront and watched what was either a homeless dude or a pilgrim (they can be hard to tell apart) pissing in the bay off of a boat ramp. This guy must have been German as he was wearing socks with sandals (I understand that’s a German thing…correct me if I’m wrong). Poor dude misjudged the waves on the boat ramp…..he was wringing his socks out the next time we saw him. Karma baby!

We saw these structures all over the place in this region of Spain.

Are they above ground crypts? My initial thought since they all have crosses on them. If not, fish drying bins? WTF? It wasn’t until we got back to the hotel that Kim looked them up. They are called Horreos, and they are used to store cobs of corn and other crops to keep them safe from rodents. They are everywhere. Sometimes you’ll see one right in front of a gas station. Bizzare.

On our way back to Santiago, I saw a sign indicating a “dolmen” off the roadway. A dolmen is a megalithic tomb, and this one dates from 2000 BC. We started driving on the very narrow dirt road towards it and suddenly found the road washed out from the recent rains. It looked unpassable, so I tried backing up, but it would have been about a half a mile before I could turn around, and it was VERY narrow with rocks on both sides. I finally said F*%$ it and forged ahead as fast as I could go given the conditions. I felt the car sliding from side to side and losing traction in the mud, and my thoughts drifted to “oh shit, we are a mile from civilization and it’s nearing sunset and we are going to get stuck out here and Kim is going to be oh so happy”…. but we made it through to dry land!

The trip back through the muck was almost as bad, and I bottomed out the car on a big rock….thank goodness they don’t check the undercarriage when you return rentals…..it was quite the impact.

I think we are done with Dolmens for awhile.

We had a really excellent dinner in Santiago at the Parador hotel. They have two restaurants there, the Dos Reis (where we had dinner), and the Enxebre (where we had lunch on Christmas day). If we stayed in Santiago again, we would definitely stay at the Parador versus the NH Collection. Right across the square from the Cathedral! Their lobby also has the most beautiful Christmas decorations.

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!