14. O Faramello to Santiago. 16 kms

 

There are some wonderful words in Spanish, including cerveza and café con leche. I learned a new one this morning.

About three kms before Santiago I came to a fork in the road. Both roads led to San Diego. Which one should I take? A Spanish pilgrim came up behind me. He pointed in one direction and rattled off some advice. I caught only one word. It was enough for me. Corto.

It was a fairly uneventful walk this morning. I kept hoping to arrive at a little village with a café for breakfast, but I had to wait seven or eight kms for that, and then gradually the strolls through the woods became shorter, and the peripheral villages began to dominate. One last stroll through the woods above, and then down a slope to a subway under the motorway and a steep climb up again, and on to the fork that  I mentioned. I was in the outskirts of the city.

It was then that I decided to use the map app to find my hotel. No problem. There it was. 3.75 km. Apple was leading me along nicely when a woman stopped me, assuming I was lost. She spoke a little English. Where are you going? Hotel Concheiros, I said. She stopped a couple of passers by and asked if they knew where it was. They didn’t. No wonder, there are hundreds of hotels in Santiago, and mine certainly wasn’t one of the better known. I kept protesting that I was fine, and that my phone would lead me, but she took my phone and try to follow its instructions. I thanked her profusely and proceeded on my way on the other side of the street. At the next intersection, I continued straight on. She shouted at me from across the street and beckoned me back. No, she said you should’ve gone left. She called some more strangers to convince me but of course they were quite bewildered. Eventually after further profuse thanks I managed to continue on my way. She really wanted to help.

Suddenly I was moving upstream against a flow of pilgrims. I realized where I was. These were pilgrims arriving from the Francés, the Norte, and the Primitivo. My hotel was on the camino coming in from the east, on the about a kilometre from the cathedral.

It’s a nice room. Very clean and white. And square, not oblong, like my room last year.

Tomorrow, I will visit the cathedral and the old town.