Santiago

We left yesterday morning in the pouring rain. About 45 minutes later, the sun came out, along with a double rainbow, which we all took as an auspicious sign. A few minutes later, we saw and heard low-flying planes, a reminder that we weren't far from Santiago airport. That was a sound we hadn't heard in over a month. However, this being Galicia, the sun didn't last, and it has been raining most of the time since yesterday.

We arrived at the Santiago cathedral just before noon. Since then, we have been running into people we hadn't seen for a while, including the Slovenian mother and daughter. We went to the compostella office, and received our certificate, with our names in Latin, attesting that we had completed the pilgrmage. At the pilgrim mass this morning, the priest announced the countries and numbers of pilrgirms from each, as well as where they started from. There were about a dozen from Canada.

Last night, we had a celebration dinner with a dozen other people, including the Yellowknife family. The Quebecois father and fdaughter arrived this am, and we are having dinner with them tonight. Tomorrow, we go to FInisterre. The tradition is that you burn something at Finnisterre, something that you brought along with you and want to get rid of, something symbolic. (one French woman told me that the old tradition was to buy new clothes in Santiago, burn your old clothes in Finnisterre, wash in the ocean as a symbol of purification, then put on your new clothes.) My problem is that I don't really want to burn any of the very small number of new clothes I brought for this trip. The only old and ratty items, that have gotten discolored when we put all our colthes in washing machines, are my bras. I could always burn one of those. Nadine says that would be a very feminist thing to do. I'll have to think about it. It could also symbolilze that I am hopelessly out of date...

Our friends are wiating, so more later.

Gisele