On this day, we could really feel that we were getting close to Santiago de Compostella. In fact, we could have made it all the way to the end without stopping, but we had the time and were in no hurry. We left Taberna Vella when it was still pretty dark and dreary - 8AM is still before sunrise here.
Because most pilgrims had stayed overnight several kilometers behind us, we had the route to ourselves for several hours that morning.
Gradually, we began seeing more people on the Camino - in part because we stopped a couple of times so Larry could have coffee and I had a Coke. If a place looked interesting, we stopped, had a snack, and got a stamp for our passports. It was at the first location below, a bar/restaurant called "Kilometro 15 because we were 15 Km from the end, that we met the only other Americans on my entire journey - a couple from Seattle who had been living in Bilbao, on the northern Spanish coast.
It was another wet day, but it never rained hard, and I was pretty used to the conditions at this point.
As we walked, we heard jet planes taking off, and at the day's 12 mile mark we looped around the north end of the Santiago airport - where we would leave the area a few days later.
We spent the night in Lavacolla, only a short distance from Santiago. The albergue had good reviews and we had a private room. But our host the night before, Heidi, grimaced when we told her we were staying there. She told us that there was a newer hostel in town - one I did not uncover in my research - that was much better. We had already confirmed, however, and could not alter our plans.
The hostel was OK, but it was noisy as people walked through the hallways. And the town of Lavacolla was a bust - we didn't find much of interest there. Historically, the place was where pilgrims washed themselves in a stream prior to reaching the cathedral in Santiago - "lava" means wash in Spanish. The only real bright spot was meeting a Canadian at the hostel. Constance is a retired government official from Ottawa who we reconnected with for dinner in Santiago after finishing our camino.
Final Post: Link.
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