Day 7 - Rua to Santiago de Compostela

The van picked us up at the hotel and drove us three kilometers to the other hotel, where we met our compadres.  We set off.   Here are a few of us getting ready to leave:

Theresa

Bob K

 After a short time, Bert and I found ourselves hiking together.   Bert's wife Karen, who is an extremely strong hiker, was keeping company with her cousin Sue who has been dealing with a number of injuries and is gamely working through the long hikes.   We heard a few women speaking English and greeted them.   They were Heidi from Germany and Vivianne from Sweden, who met each other only yesterday.  We ended up staying with them for a while.  After Bert stopped for a bathroom break, I stayed with these women for several hours.   Heidi works for a cruise ship - has several weeks vacation in between very long stretches at sea - her next time off will be in January!  Vivianne works in management for a large company, and is a lawyer.  Both women are staying in hostels; they sometimes make arrangements ahead of time and sometimes wait until they feel it is time to stop for the day.  After an hour or so, we decided to stop for a snack at a restaurant and then explore the chapel next door.   While we were there, quite a number of our group caught up.  Vivianne chose to eat indoors and Heidi was our photographer, so they are not in this picture:

Ron, Joe, George, Bob K (seated), Peter, Barb, ???, Bert

We stopped off in the chapel.   It was a very small but beautiful.   A few minutes later, a young woman came in and sang some beautiful songs - we do not know what language nor what she was singing about!   Here is the chapel, along with a huge cactus which was across the lawn from it:
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I continued with Heidi and Vivianne, learning more about the cruise ship, and about Vivianne's husband and children.  They also learned a little bit about my life - and we had interesting discussions about religion.  After a few hours, we reached a small mountain from which Santiago de Compostela could be seen.   There was a very strange sculpture on the top.   It had four faces, showing different pilgrims going to Santiago de Compostela.   Here are some pictures of it:

 

Pope John Paul II

St. Francis

 





















At this monument, we met up with many of our group - Rhonda and Dave, Joe and Peter, Rose, Theresa, and others.  We decided to wait for more to arrive, so first Heidi and then Vivianne left.   When others of our group did not arrive as we expected, Bert walked on and I followed about five minutes later and caught up with Bert some time after that.

As we were approaching Santiago de Compostela, we encountered quite a few people we had met over the past few days - from Salt Lake City, from Canada, and others.  We thought we were close when we saw this sign:

We were wrong!  We walked about two more miles before walking into something recognizable as a city.  And we were destined to walk about two additional miles before reaching our destination.   That left time for more interesting things to happen!

As we are both fond of cats and dogs, we were happy to see this sign:

We kept walking and walking and finally walked past a bar where we saw Heidi and Vivienne enjoying a beer!   With less than one kilometer to go, we sat down and joined them.   The beer was cold and delicious!

Vivienne, Bob, Bert, and Heidi.   Yes - it was raining, but not hard.

At last, we arrived at our destination - the Cathedral of Santiago.   This is where El Camino de Santiago ends.  It was no surprise to see that this old building was in need of repairs!  Look at all that scaffolding!   There were plenty of people in the courtyard.

 

It took a long walk around the building to find the entrance.   Bert stayed in the courtyard and I went inside - where I saw Dave and Rhonda, Ron and Joan, and Rose.    It is a magnificent building, as you would expect.   I waited on a very long line to walk behind the back of the altar (where there was really not much to see) (and where photography was not allowed); and then a shorter line to see the burial place of St. James.  It is interesting that his name is not presented as "James".   More on that below.

A plaque commemorating the visit
from Pope John Paul II

A note on the name of "St. James".   The sign clearly says "Sepulcrum Sancti Iacob Gloriosum".   It does not take a linguist to translate that as "Tomb of St. Jacob the Great".   Yes - Jacob, not James.

This brought to mind a news article from about ten years ago that was in both Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Wall St. Journal.   It talked about a wonderful archaeological find - a box containing the bones of James, the brother of Jesus.  There was a picture in the article that had very clear Hebrew writing on it - with the name "Yakov" ("Jacob").  I sent an e-mail to the religion editor of the Plain Dealer asking about this discrepancy.  He never responded - and I never saw any follow-up articles.  Perhaps if some scholar of such matters reads this, they can add a comment clearing up the confusion.  Perhaps "James" is a name derived from "Jacob" in Greek or Latin or some other language?

In any case, we are left this this question as we worked our way to the hotel, dinner, and bed.