The last stretch…left early, just after 6, some ups and downs, but the more challenging was to find an open café!
After some pictures, another café for the second stamp of the day on my pilgrim credentials, it was off to the pilgrim office for my credential and distance certificate.
To get the certificate you need 2 stamps/day from a café, your albergue or even a roadside vendor and musician had their own stamps for pilgrims on the Camino.
And then you get:
And a case to carry them home in.
Went to the noon pilgrimage mass inside the cathedral Santiago
And the botafumeiro swung with incense today. 
I’ll post a video to FB or email when I get home, but it takes 6 people who are trained in how to swing this incensar correctly. It swings on church feast days, like Pentecost this coming Sunday, or when a pilgrim group pays to have it swing OR perhaps we were just really smelly pilgrims today and they needed to cover our sweat and journey smells! That’s actually how the incensar ritual got started🤣.
So, what’s next? I’m in the Albergue Seminario Menor - a room of my own(!) w a sink and bath/shower just across the hall for 2 nights. I’ll explore Santiago some more tomorrow and then on Wednesday I’ll leave for Muxia/Fisterre - the end of this corner of the earth, where one of the most western points of land meets the Atlantic - for a 3-day/2-night retreat to ponder/reflect and integrate this journey before heading back to Santiago then to Porto and then home. I will likely take a few days off from blogging.
Buen Camino!
