As we know, august is the big vacation month in Spain and therefore most Spaniards walking the Camino do it this month.
The line at the pilgrims office today around 11.45 was quite long, but this is also the peak time of the day to get your compostela, since most pilgrim walk into town around that time.
With the flood of visitors to Santiago this weekend, the number of pilgrims arriving also has increased.
This photo shows the line at the pilgrims office to get the Compostela. I would guess a 30 minute wait, more or less.
This weekend is the last long weekend of the summer. Today (Friday) is a holiday in Spain, and this fills up old town in Santiago.
This summer has not been a warm one, the paper today reported that Santiago only has had one day with more than 30c.
Even so, today people have shown up in Santiago, making it THE place to be.
August is the big vacation month in Spain, so many pilgrims come into Santiago each day. Here are some of the ones that came in today.
If you were walking out to Finisterre this past weekend, you will most likely have a tan today.
The photo below is from just north of Muros (taken Saturday). Sun tan lotion required by the way. As you can see, we had 3-4km of beach practically to ourselves.
Many questions that we get in the forum are related to “I am flying in from X and need to get to my camino starting point Y” and then the conversation goes on how to best travel within Spain.
Early on we created a section in the forum, just for those kinds of questions and we have over 1600 posts with suggestions and questions on this topic.
Many of these questions includes mentions of either a bus company or the train in Spain. But it is also worth mentioning that you can get some good prices and deals on domestic flights in Spain. Many times these flights are cheaper than bus/train, and takes a fraction of time.
Have a look at the forum for how you might travel to your starting point.
The Wall Street Journal reports today that the two low cost airlines, Vueling and Clickair has decided to merge. They will still fly under the Vueling brand.
Clickair was a spin off from Iberia only a few years ago, but the raising fuel prices seems to have made this merger neccesary.
For pilgrim traveling in and out of Santiago de Compostela the news could be better, since the major routes from Santiago (to Madrid and Barcelona) now is served by fewer airlines and this often means higher prices.
Largest internet community on the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.
The Camino forum:
pilgrimage to santiago de compostela - Google News