27/5/13 Outeiro ➡ Santiago 17km

27/5/13 Outeiro  ➡ Santiago 17km 

Up before the alarm this morning for the last leg.

Good Albergue last night, really good sleep.

Terrain good and scenery lovely.

So many ups into Santiago, why do they build church's on top of a hill !

The yellow arrows dried up on the way into Santiago, so we just followed the church spires when we could see them.

We had a crowd to walk in with today the Dutch, the German's, and the Australian's woohoo. 

I simply cannot believe that we have walked a thousand kilometres. 

It was so exciting seeing the spires of the church in the distance as we knew we were getting close.

As we found our way to the square and the front facade of the church we saw Janet and the squealing and cheers began. We saw Boje who had arrived the day before and he was our main paparazzi dude. 

All the tourist groups were then taking photos of us as well and one young girl couldn't believe we had walked the kilometres that we did and she had a photo with Jan.

Wow, what a sense of achievement I still cannot believe that we have finally finished and we have made it.

After our photo session we found our accommodation and dumped our bags to run back to the cathedral for the pilgrims mass. The botafumeria was up so that was an extra treat.

Cristy and I then went to pick up our packages that we had sent on from the trail, only to find that the office was unattended so we were stuffing around with what to do when out of nowhere we were reunited with our lovely Giovanni from the beginning of our trip. he was with his daughter and son who had met him in Ourense and they had had a family walking trip. We were so excited as we didn't think we would see him again. 

A yummy lunch of calamaries and cervaza rounded out our pilgrimage nicely.

Around 7 pm we all met up at the pilgrims office for drinks and tapas, it was quite a crowd. As the Via de la Plata is not as popular as the Camino Frances the chance of seeing the pilgrims you walk with is quite slim. So we were so lucky that a lot of those pilgrims we had walked with were still actually in Santiago. Great night, great tapas, great fun.

I will be walking to Fisterra and Muxia in the next few days, so giving the pies a bit of a rest then it's back on with the backpack for a little more walking.