Although I believe it to be true that Madrid is an utterly beautiful, romantic city, we arrived this morning having taken a sleeper car on the night train from Santiago to what felt like the most chaotic place on earth... walls of concrete, commuters... heck, people that work! (this was eerily absent in some of the tiny northern villages... more on the decline of the rural communities of northern Spain later...)
Yes. We made it to Santiago yesterday after hauling ourselves through the last 20km mostly by starlight so that we could be present for the pilgrim mass at the cathedral at noon (one of many pilgrim rituals...) The feeling upon arrival into the Cathedral plaza was indescribable for so many reasons... The first thing I noticed of course was the imposing size of this cathedral... one of the largest ever built by human hands, most of the limestone was brought by pilgrims to the site for years on end. It dwarfed every other cathedral we had seen along the way. The second thing I noticed was the tourists... hundreds of tourists who had stepped off their buses mere meters away and walked into the square with multiple well suited translators. Of course with hoards of tourists followed the hoards of vendors and hawkers with walking staffs and scallop shells (camino paraphanalia)... I even saw a group ask a fellow walker if she would pose for photos with her credential (kind of like a passport that gets filled with stamps along the way to prove your camino) And then, to the back of the square we saw our fellow walkers. Everyone was embracing, laughing, crying, sitting, staring... and it was like this for the rest of the day... everyone just stayed in the square hoping to welcome others as they arrived that they had lost touch with along the way. Vince and I both had people we hoped to see again and before we caught our train we saw each one of them. It was magic.
Vince has flown back to Canada now and I´m in Madrid for a few days. I thought it would be nice to see the Prado, do some shopping... you know, ´civilized stuff´. Went to the Prado this afternoon, its huge and impressive, but I somehow got lost more times inside this museum than on the whole camino ... and I had maps! After this I went up to the ´high street´Calle Serrano in the hopes of replacing my camino shoes with something a little more lovely... nothing fit... or maybe I just didn´t want it to?
I know I have alot more to say about this camino, so although the journey may be finished, my thinking about it is not... stay tuned...
Yes. We made it to Santiago yesterday after hauling ourselves through the last 20km mostly by starlight so that we could be present for the pilgrim mass at the cathedral at noon (one of many pilgrim rituals...) The feeling upon arrival into the Cathedral plaza was indescribable for so many reasons... The first thing I noticed of course was the imposing size of this cathedral... one of the largest ever built by human hands, most of the limestone was brought by pilgrims to the site for years on end. It dwarfed every other cathedral we had seen along the way. The second thing I noticed was the tourists... hundreds of tourists who had stepped off their buses mere meters away and walked into the square with multiple well suited translators. Of course with hoards of tourists followed the hoards of vendors and hawkers with walking staffs and scallop shells (camino paraphanalia)... I even saw a group ask a fellow walker if she would pose for photos with her credential (kind of like a passport that gets filled with stamps along the way to prove your camino) And then, to the back of the square we saw our fellow walkers. Everyone was embracing, laughing, crying, sitting, staring... and it was like this for the rest of the day... everyone just stayed in the square hoping to welcome others as they arrived that they had lost touch with along the way. Vince and I both had people we hoped to see again and before we caught our train we saw each one of them. It was magic.
Vince has flown back to Canada now and I´m in Madrid for a few days. I thought it would be nice to see the Prado, do some shopping... you know, ´civilized stuff´. Went to the Prado this afternoon, its huge and impressive, but I somehow got lost more times inside this museum than on the whole camino ... and I had maps! After this I went up to the ´high street´Calle Serrano in the hopes of replacing my camino shoes with something a little more lovely... nothing fit... or maybe I just didn´t want it to?
I know I have alot more to say about this camino, so although the journey may be finished, my thinking about it is not... stay tuned...
No comments:
Post a Comment