An 18 km day, but it was enough. We stand on the heights that overlook the city of Santiago, our goal!!! We are 4.5 km away from the Cathedral, but we do not want to enter until tomorrow, so we can celebrate Stella's birthday in style. It has been a good day and we have chosen to stay in the Xunta (municipal) Alburgue, that rather resembles military barracks. They are 30 cinder block buildings built on a sloping hill with a plaza half way down that has a couple of cafeteria restaurants and a souvenir store. Surreptitiously (and at the risk of his job), the hospitalier at the reception desk strongly urges us to go back up past the monument to the local restaurants and bars for better food. So we do and go to O Labrador, apparently a very popular place with the locals. We have a wonderful meal of fish, salad, fries and ice cream. And wine. It's a "we're almost here!" celebration and the anticipation and excitement is palpable in each of us.
This morning has been a bright, sunny morning; a fairly easy walk with a lot of other pilgrims through somewhat industrial surroundings on the outskirts of Santiago and its airport. We started off quietly enough from the woods of Santa Irene,
but that eventually gave way to more scraggly growth and openness surrounding highways and development. Here and there, we have seen some more enormous trees, especially in the little city of Arca. We pass through the village of Lavacolla, an attractive little town with lots of little ornamental horreos in peoples' yards. Lava, as in lavatory, to wash. This used to be a very ceremonial stopping point for pilgrims to prepare themselves for reaching Santiago. Back in the Middle Ages, Christians didn't wash as often as we do now (and actually ridiculed Jews and Muslims for doing so!), but it seemed a right and good and proper thing to do, to have some sort of ritual purification before entering such a holy city and pilgrimage site. So, Lavacolla, which is blessed with a small river (now not much more than a trickle), became the occasion to do that. According to the guidebook, Lavacolla has also long had a reputation as a 'tourist trap' - even in the Middle Ages! Inns, restaurants and the like from Compostela would do advance advertising here. Rumors about scarcity would be put forth, forcing vulnerable and bone-weary pilgrims to pay in advance for lodging and meals they hadn't even seen yet! Some things don't change much over the years!! There really isn't an opportunity for us to do any ritual 'cleansing' (and I don't know what that would have consisted of anyway in our case), nor is there even an open cafe to get some caffeine at the time we are coming through in the very early morning, so we just admire the village and keep on going.
At last we begin to ascend the last hill before Santiago, Monte de Gozo, or Mount of Joy, or Monxoi in the local dialect. It is named so because of the euphoria all of us pilgrims have for reaching the height and catching our first glimpse of the cathedral's towers in Santiago. Although, let me tell you that Stella and I never do that while we are on the hillside - perhaps we just don't know what direction in which to look, or the haze isn't favorable, but we really never locate our goal visually. It DOES NOT however take away from our euphoria. We, along with all the others, including several families, wind our way up the hillside. There is an area that the Camino goes through that is part industrial park and part camp/resort/horse training area. Even though our whole journey is only 18 km, it seems to stretch out. Perhaps it's becase we've noticed that they quit putting kilometer markers up in the last few days. I have wondered if it is because the actual path of the Camino has changed so many times (and keeps changing) that this is to account for slack. So we don't REALLY know exactly how far we come this day. Or maybe it's like a small child waiting for Christmas or their birthday, the closer it gets, the slower the days seem to go. Anyway, even though it is supposed to be a shorter day, the walk does seem to take awhile.
Finally, near the edges of the Santiago airport, I pass this stone marker, making it all feel very real.
Can you tell by my smile how excited I am? I take several other pilgrims' pictures by the same marker for them. We are all so happy to be where we see Santiago "carved in stone." Soon, we are moving out of the more industrial park area and into cottages and residences. We are beginning to come to the crest of the 'hill.' Here's another Camino kitty, taking it all in. 
I wonder if the animals watching us compare notes about the pilgrims they see?Someplace up at the top of the hill, there is a little parklet where I rest for a moment and wait for Stella, which is not a long wait. Her smile and eyes are as bright as mine - we are so excited to be this far!!! We continue to walk through Monte de Gozo, which is still actually climbing in altitude a bit. Along the way, we spot this "Easter Island" design for clipping hedges. Perhaps Edward Scissorhands lives in this village!
I wonder how many pilgrims are plodding by here, head down, focused on reaching the top, never noticing the gardening and smiling at the gardener's sense of humor?We continue up through the center of the town and a few hundred yards further up, suddenly we arrive at an open area up to our left. A wide gravel path leads up to the very summit of Monte de Gozo, where a large monument crowns the 'hill.'
From our vantage point, it looks rather like a truncated pyramid with a bit of Stonehenge on top. There are dozens of pilgrims just milling about - some sprawled on the grassy hillside, some getting refreshments from a beverage cart, others taking pictures for posterity, others simply marveling that they are here. We wander up towards the monument to get a better look, and the closer we get, the more obvious it is that the top is NOT like Stonehenge. 
We aren't quite sure what the symbolism of the sculpture does represent, but it is interesting. When we get up to it, we can see that the base has four sides. The first one we come to commemorates Pope John Paul II as a pilgrim before he became pope. The opposite side is St. Francis. I decide that his pocket is the perfect place for the second of my two little stones that I have brought all the way from Jerry Hall Rd. near my house. 
Somehow, putting the stone in Francis' pocket already gives me some sense of completion, of coming full circle on this trip; I'm not quite sure why. Maybe it is knowing that the Camino has changed me irrevocably, and in this little way, by bringing these two small stones and leaving them on the Camino, I have changed it by my presence. Maybe it is just being on this "mount of joy" and my joy already overfloweth. We go down over the crest of the hill to find the military-looking alburgue, but we are early for check-in, so we just find a bench in the shade to wait. Eventually, we get checked in, get the advice about where to go and eat and go have a wonderful lunch. We slowly wander back to the alburgue, exploring the little chapel up by the monument as we come back. We check out the guidebooks about Santiago for tomorrow. I go walking down the hill through the rest of the huge alburgue. Despite the large number of spaces, many of the buildings are not even open, because they aren't needed. Perhaps in a couple of weeks, as it gets closer to St. James' feast day, and there are more pilgrims, they will be used. I wander down to the common area.
There is a wonderful pilgrim fountain in the middle. And at the far side, the Rotary Club of Santiago has a stone marking 4 km to the cathedral! 
It is the first kilometer marker I have seen for a while. A couple of cafeterias are open, but they have been invaded by some children's soccer teams that are apparently staying here. There are a couple of little touristy stores, but it is all cheezy stuff that I have no need of. I get a beer and settle in to people watch in the very large plaza.Eventually, I wander back up to our bunkroom to find out what Stella wants to do about dinner. She is deep in conversation, or rather, she is deep in listening to Grace, the young lady from Alaska, whose main gift is talking and talking, who has arrived. I stay for a little while, but find that I am far too antsy to listen much and prefer the solitude of being outside. Stella isn't up for dinner anyway, so I go back down to the cafeteria and grab a salad. Even when I return and hour or more later, Grace is still talking! I find a little library in the building across the way and kill some time. I return and Grace is still talking. No wonder Stella is such a good deacon! Finally I give up and get ready for bed. Some other folks in the room do, too. At some point, Grace finally gets the hint and either goes somewhere else to talk or gets into her bunk - by then, I am asleep!
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