Night in Padron and then the walk into Santiago de Compostela.



























 Well this is the Eve of the last piece of the walk. After that we travel by car and eat, drink and sight see as opposed to walk and eat drink and sight see . 

Padron I would have to say was a bit disappointing. Our hotel was at the crap end of town, nowhere near the historic district , but it was close to the railway station. We walked in to the hotel and the female receptionist could barely lift her eyes up to greet us. I said we have a reservation for Hamilton and she snapped back “passports!”. I said back “yes I will take off my back pack right now and give them to you”. After a while she said you are in room 306 and breakfast is served from 7.00, here is a map of Padron and the historic centre is here” . Thanks and how long does it take to walk there? 6 minutes!. 

I noticed that we had 1/2 board there, which means a meal has been paid for . The bar and restaurant looked lousy and I said that we were going to have dinner in the historic centre so could we have a snack in the hotel for lunch . “NOT POSSIBLE, YOU HAVE BEEN BOOKED FOR DINNER!. But we aren’t going to eat dinner here, so can we at least get a sandwich please? NOT POSSIBLE!. I thought , you bitch. 

Russell and I put our bags in the room and went straight to the historic centre to get on the gas. We saw lots of people we had seen walking and had drinks with a few. We ended up eating in one of the bars with 2 ladies from Holland and 3 people from Spain. Then wandered back to our hotel and didn’t even consider having a night cap in the bar. 

Had a great nights sleep and then I tried to have a shower with the merest dribble coming out of the crappy shower. It was shithouse. While Russell was trying to have a shower I went down for breakfast . Well if I thought the shower was crap you should have seen the breakfast . No fruit , plain yogurt, a rock hard roll, a sticky as all get out excuse for a croissant, reasonable orange juice (hard to stuff that up) and the skinniest piece of cheese and packet ham you could shave. Coffee no better. 

We bailed quickly and headed off to Santiago. In our notes from Glenyce from Wandering the World she did say The hotel Rosalia was “a hotel of convenience” which I guess means ‘easily to start your days walk from’. 

We arrived in Santiago and visited the Cathedral. When I walked in the walls did shake and there was a tremor amongst the pews. Reckon that was from Russell’s presence and it was the same with Slats last year. I might be the common denominator but it can’t be from me. 

We ran into Erika from Budapest, who we had walked with a bit yesterday and her and Simon , who we had also met yesterday , all went down to the Pilgrims office to collect our Compostelas. We had a couple of beverages after that and then Russell and I came back to our beautiful hotel the Altair. Our room is great with a little lounge area, great shower, well located and very friendly reception staff.Complete opposite to last night. Cleaned up now and about to go out for drinks and dinner. 

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