Monday, September 5, 2022. A trip to Modena, another great lunch and a trip to Lake Garda.

First thing in the morning we visited Marco’s business.

Marco sells plastic packaging and labels and other packaging materials to clothing manufacturers in and around Carpi and Modena.

After Marco set up his assistant for the day we drove to Modena. This is the cathedral of Modena.

This is the inside of the Modena Cathedral. I lit a candle and said a prayer for everyone.

The woman who runs this little sandwich place was so excited to see Marco. He told me that she makes the best sausage sandwich in Italy. We split one of her award winning sandwiches and Marco was right. It was very, very good.

We had a glass of sparkling white wine to go along with the sandwich.

The sandwich shop was located in a market like the one in Santiago. Six long stalls all under one roof selling almost anything edible. All local and all fresh and all delicious.

Next we went to the house of Marco’s father and mother for lunch and Frago joined us.

We started out with homemade tortellinis in chicken broth. They were so good.

Next we had meatballs in a marinara sauce. These were little bits of heaven. They were that good.

Then we had roasted chicken thighs. These are Cosetta’s specialty and they were really good.

After lunch we took a 45 minute drive up to Lake Garda. This is the largest lake in Italy. You can see the effect of the severe drought and hot spell that Italy is suffering through. The water level is down significantly.

This is the castle that was used by the Duke of the region to guard the lake.

We drove back to Carpi and we are having dinner in the Square.

As a starter we are having focaccia bread smothered with soft cheese and topped with capicola. This was beyond good.

Second course is a hamburger made with pulled pork. Yum

As a third course we had fried zucchini flowers. Very tasty. What a great dinner. I am stuffed.

They have a Movie on the Square in Carpi every night during the summer. Tonight it was Vertigo with Jimmie Stewart.

That’s it for tonight. I hope you had a good day wherever you are. Good night from Carpi, Italy.

Sunday, September 4, 2022 – First Day in Carpi, Italy.

Our flight was delayed out of Porto so we didn’t get to Bologna until 2:00 AM. Marco’s father and mother, Alfredo and Cosetta, picked us up at the airport and drove us 45 minutes to Marco’s apartment in Carpi. That was so nice of them to do that especially when you consider the late hour and the flight delay.

Heaven. A bed big enough so that my feet aren’t hanging over the footboard.

We got up at about 8:00 AM Sunday morning and walked down to the town square.

This is the Cathedral at one end of the town square in Carpi.

The inside of the Cathedral is spectacular.

This is a photo of the town square take from the end of the square with the Cathedral in the background. This is third largest town square in Italy.

We stopped in a cafe on the town square for breakfast. I had this delicious chocolate croissant and a glass of orange juice.

This is the church where Marco was baptized, and confirmed, etc. It was damaged when an earthquake hit Carpi in 2012 and it is structurally unsafe for occupancy. However, the bells in the bell tower still toll on the quarter hour.

This church is just off the town square. It was built in 1200 A.D.

Marco said that this church is almost never open. We got lucky. They were setting up for a wedding so we got to see the inside. Very small and very time worn but beautiful in its simplicity.

On our way back to Marco’s place we stopped at the grocery store and picked up all the fixings for a huge lunch.

We ate outside on Marco’s back deck. Marco’s good friend Frago came over and his father Alfredo and mother Cosetta joined us. Unfortunately, I was so focused on the food that I failed to take a group picture. The pasta carbonara was the best pasta I have ever had. Marco said that using good pasta is the key.

According to Marco, this is the Cadillac of pasta. He used it to make the carbonara and it is really good.

We had salad and then crostini. Crostini is bread topped with a cheese and sausage mixture that is cooked in the oven. It was way beyond delicious.

We then had crackers with cheese and anchovies that Marco carried with him in his pack all the way from Santander. The anchovies from the Cantabrian Sea around Santander are reputed to be the best anchovies in the world.

I had a shot of grappa to wash down the anchovies.

The dessert was a blueberry and cheese pastry made by Marco’s mother. It was very good and I would have asked for seconds but I was way beyond stuffed.

This is me taking a nap after that fabulous three hour lunch.

That’s it from Carpi, Italy. I hope you had a great day wherever you are. Good night.

Saturday, September 3, 2022. Travel day from Santiago to Porto by bus and then a flight from Porto, Portugal to Bologna, Italy and a car from Bologna to Carpi.

Our stay in Santiago is over. We git out of the alburgue at about 10:30 and walked into Old Town Santiago on our way to the bus station. We waited around for an hour until the stir fry joint opened so we could get lunch before we got on the bus.

I just love this place. Cheap and delicious and nutritious. You can only eat so much pulpo.

Chicken stir fry loaded with veggies. The Spanish diet is not loaded with veggies.

After lunch we walked down to the bus station and boarded our bus for the 3 and 1/2 hour bus trip to the Porto Airport.

After an uneventful bus trip we arrived at the Porto Airport. We have six hours to kill before the flight takes off at 10:00 PM.

I am not quite sure why but this chocolate banana split drink at Starbucks at the Porto airport sounded and looked good. It wasn’t that good but it was chock full of calories.

I had another pastel nada. This is the national pastry of Portugal. It is a cup of puff pastry filled with a delicious egg custard.

That’s it for tonight. I will post tomorrow from Carpi, Italy.

I hope you had a great day today wherever you are. Good evening from the airport in Porto, Portugal.

Friday, September 2, 2022 – Last full day in Santiago.

No appointments this morning so we had a late wake up call. After a nice long hot shower it was off to find breakfast.

This is breakfast. It is a croissant breakfast sandwich. They split the croissant in half and spread a layer of vanilla cream and a layer of chocolate cream on the two halves. They put the two halves together and cover the whole thing in chocolate and sprinkle it with almonds. It was way beyond delicious.

After our late breakfast we wandered over to Obradorio Square to watch the groups of pilgrims enter the Square. I decided to tour the Cathedral Museum.

This is the cloister on the roof of the Cathedral.

This is a wooden carved altarpiece in the Bishop’s Residence. Each one of the carved niches on the alter piece houses a Church relic. The alter piece is at least 30 feet tall. I stopped here and said a prayer for everyone.

This is a photo of Obradorio Square taken from the balcony running along the top of the Cathedral.

Now it is time for lunch.

This is a great tapas place near the Cathedral. It was very expensive and was packed for lunch. So we decided to have a burrito.

We decided to go back to the burrito place and have lunch.

Then the El Chapo burrito. Not as good as a Denver burrito but good enough that I ate it all and licked the plate.

We found an outdoor store near the burrito joint and I got two new quick dry hiking shirts. I destroyed two shirts on the Norte and I needed to replace them. They are so dirty and stained they will never come clean, no matter much I wash them.

What is this? It is the suitcase I mailed from the post office in Santander to the post office in Santiago. The post office in Santiago is about a block from the Cathedral. I showed them my paperwork and my passport and within a matter of minutes I walked out with my suitcase and my clean non hiking clothes. I love it when a plan works.

I decided to attend the Pilgrim Mass this evening. Who knows if I will ever be back in Santiago at the Cathedral and who knows if I will ever be back during a holy year. What better way to end this pilgrimage than attending a Pilgrim Mass. Every seat in this large Cathedral was taken and every square inch of standing room was taken. This was a great opportunity to take some time for contemplation and offer up a heartfelt prayer for everyone.

As an added bonus they did swing the Botofumiero. In the old days the Botofumiero incense burner was used to get the stink of thousands of unwashed Pilgrims out of the Cathedral. The Botofumiero swing always moves me deeply. I am so grateful to have had an opportunity to be part of this 1200 year tradition of pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

On this trip there were plenty of times that I had to tell myself that no matter how hard it is I am going to make it. Well, in the end I made it. And I am so happy that I did make it. I have so many people to thank for making this journey possible. I won’t mention people by name for fear of leaving someone off the list. You know who you are and I hope you know how grateful I am for your support over the years. But I do want to give a special shoutout and sincere thank you so much to Jan for understanding my need to do this and being patient with me during this extended absence and for holding down the fort in Denver while I am away and for loving me always. I love you to the moon and back.

Today I walked 13,000 steps, 9 kilometers and climbed the equivalent of 14 flights of steps.

I hope you had a good day whenever you are. Good night from Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

Thursday, September 1, 2022. Bus tour to Finisterre and Muxia.

Today we took an all day bus tour to Finisterre and Muxia with stops at a number of points of interest along the way.

First stop was this point of interest about 10 kilometers west of Santiago.

This point of interest is an ancient bridge where, legend has it, the Romans were chasing the followers of Saint James who were in Galicia trying to find a final resting place for his remains. As they crossed the bridge, with the Romans in hot pursuit, the center span of the bridge collapsed, allowing the followers of Saint James to escape the Roman pursuit.

Beautiful estate near one of the approaches to the bridge.

This is the altar in the church on the beach in Muxia. It is a seafarer’s church.

People in Muxia hang models of their boats from the ceiling of the church as a form of prayer for their safety.

I am sitting next to the zero kilometer marker for the Camino from Santiago to Muxia. In the background is a monument acknowledging all the pilgrims who stopped their journey to help clean up an oil spill about 15 years ago.

After we spent an hour exploring Muxia, we drove to the lighthouse at Finisterre.

This is the zero kilometer marker for the Camino from Santiago to Finisterre.

This is the view from the lighthouse at Finisterre.

Steven Hawking thought Finisterre was a special place.

After we finished exploring the lighthouse we drove down to the seaside town of Finisterre to have lunch.

Second course, cod and potatoes. Very good.

The meal came with a nice bottle of white wine.

Next stop was the Ezaro Waterfall. It looks like we are in a fjord in Norway.

Next we visited the second longest hórreo in Galicia. The size of your hórreo is an indication of your importance and your status.

This hórreo is over 100 feet long and is made of stone.

This is a pigeon house. They would put grain in this house to lure in the pigeons. The pigeons would gorge themselves on the grain and when they were so fat they couldn’t get out through the openings at the top, they would be harvested.

Church near the hórreo where I took a break and prayed for everyone.

Dinner at the stir fry place. It was delicious.

That’s it for today. We walked 12,000 steps, 8 kilometers and climbed the equivalent of 20 flights of stairs.

I hope you are having a good day wherever you are. Good night from Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

Wednesday, August 31, 2022 – A Relaxing Day in Santiago.

With nowhere special to go this morning it was time to unplug the alarm clock, sack in and get a really good nights sleep. We finally woke up around 8:30 and got out of the pension at 9:30.

This is the street that leads out of our pension to the Cathedral.

The same picture but focused more on the Cathedral.

What beautiful flowers framing this balcony.

After Marco did a little souvenir shopping, we strolled over to the food market in Santiago. The food market is eight long narrow buildings where the people of Santiago can buy fresh meat, fish, cheese and produce.

Each one of the eight halls in the market look the same. There is a walkway down the middle with food stalls on either side of the walkway. This food hall specializes in meat.

Each food hall has a stone marker on the wall near the entrance denoting what you will find when you enter the hall.

The fresh fruits and vegetables look great.

What do you do with a whole pig’s head? For all I know I have been eating pig’s head as I walked on the Norte. Sometimes I ordered things from the menu when I had no idea what I was ordering.

Next to the Santiago food market I found this beautiful church, the church of Saint Augustine.

Inside this beautiful church I lit a candle and said a prayer for everyone

Now it is time for lunch at the same place we had dinner last night.

Manuel is the owner of the Abrasador. He was thrilled to see us back for lunch.

Anne, from France, is back from Finisterre and she joined us for lunch.

That is two pounds of very rare steak. We had a sizzling metal plate that we used to finish cooking our strips of steak. After that we sprinkled the cooked strips of meat with salt and enjoyed the deliciousness.

The Spanish include fries with your steak. Vegetables would have been nice but the fries were good.

Manuel insisted that we finish our meal with a frosted shot glass full of liquor.

After lunch we walked down to Obradorio Square and had gelato for dessert. I decided to try this chocolate and hazelnut gelato. It was beyond delicious.

The Door of Forgiveness. It is only open during holy years. I have no idea why people aren’t lining up to enter the Cathedral through this door.

Mark and Marco in Obradorio Square in front of the Cathedral’s Portico Of Glory.

This is the Heisenberg burrito, a nod to Breaking Bad, and it was delicious.

Moonrise over the dome of the Church of Saint Mary. Definitely an occasion to say a prayer for everyone.

That’s it for today. We walked 15,000 steps, 9 kilometers and climbed the equivalent of 9 flights of stairs.

I hope you are having a good day wherever you are. Good evening from Santiago, Spain.

Tuesday, August 30, 2022 – Happy Birthday to my Father A day trip to A Coruña.

This is my father, Robert Marinus Hansen.

He is such a good man. A great husband, father, friend and mentor.

This is my father with my mother, Rita Theresa Hansen. We call her Saint Rita for more reasons than I have time to share in this blog. They have been happily married for over 70 years.

Today is my father’s 94th birthday. That is a pretty big deal. My father has always been my hero. When I was a kid and someone would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up I would always say my father. I still say that. He is the best father there has ever been or ever will be. He has always been my best friend and an amazing mentor. Everything I am and everything I have ever accomplished I owe to my father and of course my mother. A heartfelt happy birthday to my favorite person in the whole wide world. Love, Mark.

We decided to take the train to A Coruña and be tourists for the day

This is our high speed train pulling into the station at Santiago.

On the Spanish passenger rail lines they are all in on the concept of concrete ties.

We have arrived in A Coruña. The skull and crossbones ☠️ tells you that A Coruña was a pirate town at one time and the tower in the middle is the Tower of Hercules. The Tower of Hercules is the oldest extant lighthouse in the world. It was built by the Romans and is still in use today. The Romans were really outstanding architects, engineers and builders.

A Coruña is an interesting blend of old and new buildings.

Surfing is a really big deal on the northern coast of Spain.

A guy was renting Segways so we decided to try it out.

We rode Segway’s up and down the beachside promenade for about 30 minutes. It is not as hard as it looks and I was very careful.

This shows one of the paths where we were riding our Segways.

We decided to walk back to the train station through old town A Coruña.

We found a hole in the wall Chinese restaurant and decided to give it a try.

This is my triple delight stir fry. Ángel hair pasta with veggies and chicken, pork and shrimp. It was delicious and with an iced tea the bill came to 7 Euros.

Spiderman climbing an obelisk in downtown A Coruña.

While Batman looks on from the top of a building across the square.

What are the chances of running across a golf tee on the sidewalk in downtown A Coruña?

Right across the street from our pension in Santiago we found this great steak place

We started with a nice cold glass of white wine. I know you are thinking that red wine goes best with steak, but the owner suggested this white wine and it was great.

Our first course was Caldo Gallego. This is a delicious local soup full of meat and cabbage and potatoes and beans.

This is the owner’s daughter who bakes the bread and tends the bar.

This is our second course. Roasted peppers and fries.

This was our third course. It was basically a thick cut sirloin cooked medium rare. It was soooooo good.

The owner gave us each a complimentary chilled glass of Drambuie and when we thanked him profusely for the phenomenal meal, he refilled our glasses.

That’s it for today. We walked 25,000 steps, 17 kilometers and climbed the equivalent of 18 flights of stairs.I hope you had a great day wherever you are. Good night from Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

Monday, August 29, 2022 – The Last Stage- Lavacolla to Santiago.

We got up at 5:00 AM this morning and started walking at 5:45. We had plenty of headlamps so the Way was well illuminated. It was so nice walking under a canopy of stars in the cool of the early morning.

We reach the 10 kilometer marker just west of Lavacolla.

This sign marks the east end of the City of Santiago de Compostela.

Now we are really close. This is the 1 kilometer marker.

Once again in Obradorio Square in front of the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. I felt a real sense of accomplishment walking into Obradorio Square this morning after completing the Camino del Norte. I also felt a real sense of thankfulness for God giving me the physical and mental and emotional health to complete this arduous Camino.

Group picture. Ann from France, Marco from Italy, Teresa from Spain, Tarek from Palestine and now London, Irene from NYC and now London, and seated is Sahand from Iran now London.

This is the group of equestrian pilgrims that have been leaving the Way littered with horse apples since we joined the Camino Frances at Arzua.

After we finished our celebration in Obradorio Square we went down to the Pilgrim office to present our Pilgrim Passports filled with stamps showing where we walked and the accommodations where we stayed at the end of each day.

This is the front side of my Pilgrim Passport.

This is the back side of my Pilgrim Passport.

This is my Compostela. It basically certifies that I walked at least 100 kilometers on a Camino and finished in Santiago. You need to present your Pilgrim Passport to the registrar at the Pilgrim Office and the stamps in your Pilgrim Passport that you get when you spend the night at an alburgue, pensión or hotel to document your journey.

This is a Certificate of Distance. The stamps in your Pilgrim Passport document where you started and then the registrar looks at the chart and figures out the distance you walked.

My Certificate of Distance shows that I walked 828 kilometers. I started in Irun at the beginning of the Camino Del Norte in July of 2019 and got as far as Santander. I was in Santander on August 8, 2019 when I got word that Anna, my sister, had passed away after courageously battling Non Hodgkins Lymphoma for two years. I immediately decided to pause my Camino Del Norte and fly back to Springfield, Illinois to be with my family to celebrate Anna’s life and mourn her passing. I had planned on resuming my journey in 2020 but COVID intervened and I was not able to even think about resuming my journey on the Norte until 2022.

I got credit for walking the entire distance from Irun to Santiago but if you have been following this blog, and you should be following this blog, I used taxis, trains, ferries, and buses to cover some of the distance on my journey along the Norte. Still, I estimate that I walked 650 kilometers of the 828 kilometers on the Norte in 2019 and 2022. Not bad for an old man.

After we finished at the Pilgrim Office we hustled over to the Cathedral to attend the 9:30 Pilgrim Mass. We got a special blessing from the bishop but the Botofumiero did not swing.

This is the Botofumiero. It is a huge incense burner that they shovel hot coals and incense into and then they swing it from one end of the Cathedral to the other. It is an experience to see the Botofumiero swing.

After Mass we walked down to the crypt where, legend has it, the remains of Saint James are entombed in a silver casket.

I lit a candle and said a heartfelt prayer for everyone.

The other side of the Door of Forgiveness.

The Door of Forgiveness is only open during a Holy Year, that is a year when the feast day of Saint James falls on a Sunday. The Holy Year was last year but the Pope extended it through 2022 due to COVID. According to the Pope if you walk the Camino and walk through the Door of Forgiveness and go to confession and pray at the tomb of Saint James all your past sins will be forgiven and your time in purgatory for those past sins will be remitted.

After we finished our business at the Cathedral we found a bar and had a Radler celebration.

After a few Radlers we decided to grab lunch.

This is one of my favorite restaurants in Santiago.

This is a great wok place where you pick out your choice of noodles and ingredients and sauce and in no time they stir fry it and it arrives at your table in a big bowl of deliciousness.

I was so hungry that I ate first and took this picture after I had almost finished my shrimp and veggies and udon noodle bowl.

This is our pension for the next five days

We have a very nice room in the Pension Pumar.

That’s it for today. We walked 19,000 steps. 13 kilometers and climbed the equivalent of 17 flights of steps.

I hope you are having a good day wherever you are. Good evening from Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

Sunday, August 28, 2022. Pub Crawl from Arzua to Lavacolla.

We got up at 5:45 AM this morning and we were out walking at 6:30. It was full dark for the first 45 minutes. There were so many people on the Way with flashlights and headlamps that we had no trouble navigating our way along the Way. The one issue we encountered was that shortly after we started walking we encountered a 1 kilometer stretch of the Way that was littered with cow dung and horse apples. The last thing you want to do is carry around a pungent load of animal excrement in the treads of your trail runners. Needless to say we were extra vigilant on this section of the trail.

After two kilometers we stopped and had breakfast at this little roadside cafe. I had a chocolate croissant and a Spanish omelette and a fresh squeezed orange juice. I forgot to take pictures of the food.

Saint James guarding the bar/café where we had breakfast.

This guy sits on the side of the road and carves walking sticks. He does not charge for a walking stick but he asks for a donation. The walk is just about over. Why would you wait until almost the very end before you equip yourself with a walking stick?

This is where we stopped for a mid morning Radler break.

Equestrian Pilgrims. They should be required to pick up their horse apples.

The group enjoying their Radler break. Please keep in mind that Radler is a beer and lemonade combination, like a shandy, and has an alcohol content of 2%.

At this bar you get a bottle of Pilgrim beer and when you are done you sign and date the bottle and they add it to their collection.

This is the group having the best tortilla on the Camino for lunch. Of course, we washed down the tortilla with Radler.

We spent most of the day walking on beautiful tree shaded paths.

Church in Lavacolla where I said a prayer for everyone.

After everyone showered we got together for Radler and appetizers. The rest of the group went out to celebrate the last night on the Camino. I went back to the alburgue to finish the blog and get some sleep.

That’s it for this evening. We walked 38,000 steps, 28 kilometers and climbed the equivalent of 38 flights of stairs. Tomorrow we walk about 12 kilometers into Santiago.

I hope you have had a good day wherever you are. Good night from Lavacolla, Spain.