Last day in Santiago

We went off a bit earlier this morning to try and avoid some of the heat expected today, 32 C. We headed for the public market first to pick up some fruit, cheese, bread and a bottle of wine to give to Victor as it is his birthday today. 

There are vendors inside the market who have the same spots every day the market is open and then there are vendors who do not have a stall but just come to sell whatever they have.

These two gals are selling just around the corner from the market, one with 1 head of lettuce and bunches of carrots and the other with just two heads of lettuce.

We went into an old fashion hardware store that was amazing, stuff piled up high but seemed very organized. We got a kick out of his filing system hanging at the back of the store.

We could just imagine bills due this week in the left hand pocket, next week in the right hand pocket!

Thursday is a civic holiday in Santiago called Ascension Day. There will be many musical events all around the old town over the next few days. We had hoped to catch some of it on Wednesday and were really lucky when all of a sudden we heard a band in Plaza Praterias behind the cathedral. We scooted over and there was a large gaggle of tourists and inside their circle was a group of dancers and a band with maybe 10 members all dressed up in old Spanish regalia. The dancers are called 

'Gigantes y cabezudos', (giants and big heads). They were parading from plaza to plaza so we watched them while they preformed where we were.

Went back to our favorite bar for our last tostadas and cafe con leche there. Really was our favorite place for a second breakfast.

We still had a little bit of last minute shopping to do.

While wandering the streets we saw this cool door knocker.

One last thing we wanted to do was meet Ivar who runs the Camino Forum on line. He provides a number of services including a left luggage storage place, an online store as well as the Forum where you can find the answer to almost any Camino question you can think of. It's always great to put a face to a name.

Ivar (pronounced Evar) is Norgwegian but spent a few years in the US and went to university there.

We headed home after that, fairly cooked to the core, for cool showers and some down time before going out for dinner to celebrate Victor's birthday, at the suitable Spanish dinner hour of 9pm.

Stay tuned 

M & W