I was just thinking when we left Lisboa, a 15 km day was an exhausting full day. Yesterday we walked 15 km up the hill in just over 3 hours and we were not even tired.
Today we woke up at 8 am, really we slept until 8 am, decadent pilgrims we are. We had breakfast in the hotel, another luxury. We walked across town to a coin laundry, another luxury, took the laundry back and then?
What do we do. There is no walking to be done, we have not even prepared our backpacks and we don't have to. Cultural shock, we are not pilgrims anymore.
So, we went out for a walk, why don't we go and check the train station so tomorrow we know where to go?
So we went with a stop at the church of San Beieo for our rosary. Beautiful small church, very quiet and gave us space for a nice spiritual moment.
Then we wondered into the market, all kinds of fish, I finally so a choco (cuttlefish) which is what we ate the other day, they are ugly but tasty. I wanted to try tetilla (little boob) cheese and we finally convinced a vendor to sell us only part of a tetilla, still a sizeable quarter of the thing. We also brought artisan bread which also was very good. Suddenly we had enough food for our lunch.
As you can imagine this walk to the train station took some time. A little farther we found a cafe that advertised churros with chocolate so we had to go in. Unfortunately once we sat down we found out they had run out of churros. Still I managed to have chocolate with apple pie Spanish style.
We finally found the train station and we timed the return to the hotel; it is half an hour. Now we can plan our timing for tomorrow morning.
We still had time for a nap and then went out for one more good bye. Our friend Clare from Ireland arrived today so we met for a drink. It was great to see her again. Both Brenda and I like her very much so we had a great time.
Then to the pilgrim Mass. We arrived half an hour early and we were surprised to find the cathedral full. I thought being that early would give us a choice of seats. Well, there was not a single seat left in the whole cathedral. The big attraction is the botafumeiro, the giant incense burner. It is once a week at the Friday evening mass and it attracts a lot of people.
Mass was intense, still going through the feelings of the end of pilgrimage. Questioning myself if the long walk has indeed changed me the way I hoped. Am I really closer to my wife? Am I really closer to my God? I hope I am, I think I am
We ended the day having dinner with Clare. We truly enjoyed the company as I said before Clare is charming. We also were lucky to find a few other pilgrim friends at the restaurant. With some regret we said good bye. Our last pilgrim good bye. From now on, every time we watch "game of thrones", we'll think of Clare and will be watching the credits for her name.
And now to bed.
Today is the day of St. Anthony, we ask him to pray for us, to help us take advantage of the opportunity we had to this pilgrimage to make us better Christians and better human beings.
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