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I'm home now.

I got to Santiago on the 18th, having walked about 85km in my last two days. I was a little bit tired.

My last 10km into Santiago, it was late, so there weren't many pilgrims on the road, but everyone I passed (or more accurately, everyone who passed me) would shout out things like "congratulations, you're almost there," and "only 7 more km!" Old men sitting in bars on sidewalks would tell me to give St. James a hug for them, and some cyclists stopped to tell me that I should turn left at the hill, and I was almost there.

Which all should have been really lovely, except I was exhausted and they were all speaking Spanish which still takes me forever to understand, so my response to all of this was to grumble to myself, "I know how fucking far it is to Santiago, do I look stupid? I've made it 790km by myself already, I don't need your goddamn directions for the last hour, and if you want to hug St. James so badly, do it yourself, douchebag."

Then when I finally got to the city, I was far more taken with all the shops selling clothes that were clean and smelled new, and that nobody had been hiking in for a month than I was with the Cathedral itself.

So, to sum up, I took two things away from my monthlong spiritual pilgrimmage:
1. a loathing for my fellow man
2. a drive to buy lots of shiny new things

Also, I probably learned some things. And I have more freckles.