Hi, how are you? It is Friday, August the 14th. We’re halfway through August. Time flies.
It’s getting a little bit more busier now in Santiago. It’s been, we had a couple of days, we’re 4,000 a few days ago, 4,000 Compostelas. It’s busy, but it’s still not crazy busy.
It’s busy down by the cathedral, as always. A lot of tourists down there. The Spaniards going on vacation is really what fills Santiago up these days.
The pilgrims as well, but not as much. There are not that many. There’s a lot more Spaniards escaping the heat in the south, traveling up north.
As you can see, the weather is actually quite comfortable. It’s overcast. I think it’s going to be up to about 25 today, which is comfortable.
Let me go through this narrow street. I’ve always gone through here when it’s quiet in the wintertime. Now in the summertime, of course, it’s 11.30, so it’s not lunch yet.
Lunch is at 2.00. You can see, hopefully, now that both of these places here are open. Getting ready. These two cafes here are a nice place to get away if it’s very, very busy in Santiago.
Anyway, as I said, the weather has been good. Of course, we had the eclipse on Wednesday. That was fun.
Santiago itself got like 99.9%. So it wasn’t a full eclipse here, but we got pretty close. I saw it from my house outside of Santiago at 99.9% as well, and it was fun. To get 100%, you had to either go up north on the Camino de Inglés, like Ordez in that area, or you could go northeast.
I think Arzúa you would get 100% as well if you were there. We decided to stay home because there’s always going to be a lot of traffic. I was working until 6.00 that afternoon.
The eclipse happened at 8.30, 8.29. It was at night, late afternoon, so I decided I was tired. Let’s go home. And I saw it from home, it was good.
So, as you can see, the people in town really are tourists. There’s a few pilgrims here and there, but mostly tourists. What else is going on? So, remember a couple of weeks ago, was it two weeks ago I think, I mentioned Wizz Air? It’s going to start a new route, or several, ten routes in Santiago.
And they were going to start flying these new routes in January, February, I think that was the plan. And now they have been moved up. And some of these new routes start actually now in November and December.
So I’ll put up a screenshot again where you can see the list of destinations on the left there. And then you see the new start date of these new flights. They moved everything up by a month, that’s what I heard.
From the papers at least, that’s what they said. So, that’s good news. Because next year, Holy Year.
And if people start flying in November, December, that’s good. Alright, so we’re getting close to the cathedral, let’s have a look at the lines. The time is 11.35. The last few days, I put up a post I think on Instagram, the last few days ago, three, four days ago.
The line went up this street one day, and then another day it went up that street over to the right there. Now it seems like the queue is on its way down to the Obradoiler again. It seems like they’ve opened the door, people are now starting to go in.
For the 12 o’clock mass. Let’s have a look how far down this line is. As soon as you get down to the cathedral, it’s crowded.
You don’t have to go far away from the cathedral to get some air. But down here, it’s packed. Okay, so this is the end of the line, so not so bad.
Although they had started moving when I came, so I’m sure the line, there’s a lot of people inside already. Anyway, let’s go on to the square and see what the square looks like. So what else, I mentioned last video that I was going to talk more about my walk, I’m going to walk in October with a group.
And we are pretty much full. What I wanted to do is I don’t want to have more than six or seven people to not make the group too big. I think we have now, we have seven that I’ve been interested in.
Just one or two that needs to confirm it for sure. But it’s pretty sure that we’re going to have a full group of seven for my October walk. But I also will walk, I decided I’m going to do more of these walks next year as well.
So if you’re interested, just stay tuned and I’ll come back with dates and how to sign up if you’re interested. I’m thinking probably maybe do one in March before Easter. And then in July maybe, and then maybe another one then later on in October.
But it all depends, next year is whole year. And it all depends how easy it is to book these places along the Camino. The lodging I mean.
In March, July and October, we’ll see what it looks like. First now I’m going to do the October one now and then we’ll see what next year looks like. But I would like to post some dates for next year pretty soon so you could start signing up if you’re interested.
So this is the Plaza de Obrador. There’s pilgrims here, you can see pilgrims. To be honest with you, I have to admit I forgot to check on the website how many pilgrims came in yesterday and how many we have total this year.
What I’ll do is I’ll put it up on the screen, I’ll check it when I come back to the office. So the number you see now with the red circle on the screen is the total number this year. And then I’ll put up another number with another red circle.
This is the number that came in yesterday. And I’m sure it’s still up from last year, probably 5 or 6%. I’ll put that up as well.
So anyway. I will walk back to the office. Hope things are good where you are.
Stay safe. Ciao ciao! Oh, by the way, I realized I forgot one thing. I saw in the paper this morning that the train to Madrid is fully booked for the next 5 or 6 days.
So there’s a lot of tourists coming from Madrid. Pilgrims trying to get back to Madrid to have a flight maybe. And so the train for the next few days is fully booked to Madrid.
So if you’re planning on traveling to Madrid on the train in the busy season like August for example and also September, I wouldn’t wait too long with the booking issue. If you wait for the last moment it might be too late. Anyway, just a thought.
There are flights available by the way if you want to get to Madrid. You can get on a flight but it’s more expensive. So one street up from the cathedral and it’s much quieter.
