A Trip to Beyond

 

  "Travel is great once you get there." I don't know who said that first. Possibly Marco Polo. Maybe Lewis in a note to Clark. I know I said it to Teresa as I opened our hotel window overlooking the Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela. "We are here," Teresa added.

  Some people say planning a trip is half the fun. That's only true if you're planning a day trip to the beach or some such easy destination. We were planning to go on a pilgrimage in Spain. For over a thousand years people have been hiking across northern Spain to the city of Santiago de Compostela in the northwest corner of Spain. We wanted to join them.

  The most popular route starts in France, crosses the Pyrenees Mountains, and travels west for around 500 miles. It takes most people 35 days and when they get to Santiago they get a scallop shell on a string to hang on their backpack. That sounded like fun till I read that long sections of the hike were like walking across northern Minnesota. Maybe we could just hike across the more scenic portions. 

  That's when I discovered a British company called On Foot Holidays which sets up self-guided tours all over Europe. They arrange lodging, give you detailed maps, and move your luggage from inn to inn. One of their itineraries is on the final eleven days of the Santiago hike. We decided to do that last spring until we discovered our passports were about to expire. 

  We applied for new passports and during the summer we started taking long walks. We realized we were not up to eleven days of 12-15 miles per day. We found that On Foot had another hike that started west of Santiago and continued on to the Atlantic coast at Finisterre or "World's End". This hike was ten days long but could be shortened to seven or even four days and those days could be shortened from 15 miles to 10. That sounded about right so we booked.

  We drove to Massachusetts in late September to visit our kids and on September 24, we flew to Madrid and then up to Santiago. We gave ourselves a couple of days in Santiago to recover from jet lag and enjoy the ambiance. Santiago probably has more going for it besides half a million pilgrims arriving in their town every year, but that's all we focused on during our stay. 

  There was a gigantic baroque cathedral with a huge plaza out front where the pilgrims officially finished their hike. It was fun to watch them arrive and pose for photos by the paving stone with the big scallop shell. They looked muy, muy feliz. There were dozens of little restaurants and even more souvenir shops in the narrow, winding streets around the cathedral. There were extra churches around the cathedral and museums to explain it all.

"We made it!"

  The Museum of the Camino explained what the big deal was about. St James was one of Jesus' favorite apostles. According to the Bible, he was beheaded in Jerusalem for preaching the gospel. According to tradition he had gone Spain at some point to spread the good news. After his beheading, his Spanish disciples brought his body to Spain for burial.  In the eighth century a monk had a vision of Saint James' grave. The local bishop built a much nicer tomb and the local king made a pilgrimage and built a church over the tomb and the pilgrims have been coming ever since.

The Saint is in.

  St. James' bones are in a crypt under the cathedral's main altar. Does the silver encrusted chest really contain the bones of the apostle? I'm certainly not going to spoil the fun at this late date. 

Donated pilgrims' walking sticks. 
The pilgrims encourage each other with Ultreia! Further!