Date: 14 October 2018

Accommodation: Smart Boutique Hotel Literario San Bieito
Weather: Cloudy early, sunny periods in the afternoon

Today was a rest day in Santiago. Being a rest day means doing the laundry, and we eventually found a laundromat that was open after initially falling into the trap of expecting premises to open at their displayed times. We also went to the Pilgrim museum which was great value for money as it has free entry on a Sunday. It did have some quite fascinating displays of pilgrimage dating back to the 13th century. We were intending to go to the 12 midday pilgrim mass but the queue snaked around the cathedral for about 200 metres (this was at 11 o’clock). Needless to say we thought we would pay homage at a later date.

We spent much of the day just wandering around the old city – it was a long weekend and there were lots of festivities along with market and food stalls. We had dinner with a number of other pilgrims who had left St Jean Pied de Port at around about the same date we did. It was a day of saying goodbye to people, and hence was tinged with sadness.

Tomorrow we walk to Negreira and we are very unsure how busy it will be in the post Santiago world. The forecast is for rain.