Foreign Perspectives

Is the Camino de Santiago a real pilgrimage these days? I had the chance to visit the city numerous times over the course of last week and the area in and around the cathedral was constantly thronged with people and even more so on Sunday.

Does that mean that they are real’ pilgrims though? Well, I suspect that the majority are, at least in part, for when we went outside the central part of the old town we found virtually no tourists at all. In fact in the new town I don’t think that there were any. That in itself is quite unusual as you would normally see some tourist overspill’ into the non-touristy sections of any town.

In tourist terms, there seems to be next to nothing touristy’ about the place on the whole. Yes, it certainly has the ancient building around the centre, but it doesn’t have the tourist shops in anything like the numbers that you’d expect given the number of visitors which implies that a fair number are pilgrims rather than tourists. It certainly does have loads of restaurants but even pilgrims have to eat so that’s not something that says tourist’. And at night, it is very lively with street theatre all around the central section and spilling out into the park but, again, even pilgrims do things at night.

However, I wouldn’t say that all of the pilgrims are quite in the mould of pilgrims of old. The pilgrim who looked haggard from his/her walk along the camino was very rare and most arrived in pretty good shape with modern day backpacks in place of the cloth bag or whatever passed for the equivalent in days of old. Considerable numbers come on bicycles too as evidenced by the number of bikes being packed in the airport. Actually the airport is something of an indication of pilgrimage activity with a massive list of destinations for such a small airport.

One rather major thing that makes life as a pilgrim somewhat easier these days is that you now only have to walk 100km to get your Compostela (200km on a bicycle) which seems like nothing in comparison to those who walked goodness knows how many miles down France and across Spain to get it not so long ago. Let’s face it: 100km is nothing. Even I would consider doing that!

Overall, I’d say that there is, if not a majority, then a sizeable minority of proper’ pilgrims. It’s just that these days, the route isn’t nearly so hard going as it was in olden days. Things have changed considerably when you see credit card’ listed as one of the essential items to take on your pilgrimage.

Arnold

I spent last week on an intensive Spanish course in the University of Santiago so this weeks entry is all about that.

Santiago is quite a small town and I managed to walk round pretty much all of it on the Saturday just prior to starting the course. Inside the surroundings of the old town it’s pretty much packed with tourists everywhere but when I ventured out into the new town surrounding it on Wednesday afternoon I found that it was just as nice with a number of nice parks but virtually no tourists. It was much more pleasant because of that as the tourists tend to congregate along a very limited number of routes through the town.

If you want to see a service in the cathedral, go very early on Sunday as the pilgrims and tourists are at their maximum then.

If you want to watch a film whilst you’re there, bear in mind that they will be in Spanish only (ie no subtitles) so you’ll need quite good Spanish to follow them.

The town remains quite lively at night too. The new town quietens down around 10pm but the old town remains lively well after midnight with numerous bars and cafes open until very late (or early!). Around the cathedral area you’ll find numerous lively groups of musicians playing well into the night with one particularly entertaining act under the arches in the building directly opposite the cathedral. If you’re in a rush, be wary of the elderly troubadours with their engaging, if overlly long, patter selling CDs of love songs along the streets leading out of the cathedral square. In the park on the way back to the university we even found quite an elaborate and engaging puppeteer act.

On Tuesday we were off to A Coruna which is on the coast. Quite a different town than Santiago obviously but still with a small old town where you can see a number of churches. It’s still quite a major port and a much larger town than Santiago although you can still manage to walk around the main tourist sights in an afternoon (ie the port area, old town and Hercules Tower).

But, what about the course? Well, it consisted of around three or four hours per day of classes plus a number of workshops on aspects of the Spanish language and Spanish culture. That might not sound like a lot but it’s hard to keep going in a foreign language for as long as that and everyone was quite tired at the end of the days (running from 9am to 10pm Sunday to Thursday). As it was largely a series of conversation classes, the progressive improvement in Spanish ability wasn’t so obvious as it is in normal classes but I’m confident that I speak Spanish a lot better now and was able to try that out this morning with some Spanish guests that we have. Not sure if I’d say I’m fluent at the moment but I’m further on the way than I was a week ago.

Arnold

People seem to think that it’s always dry and hot way down here in the south but even in August it rains. As in other places in the world, seemingly always on public holidays, so naturally since August 15th is the major French holiday it’s raining today.

Since it’s the French holiday season, we’re pretty much completely full and therefore get some bookings from people who want one type of room but because it’s not available, book something completely different. This morning for instance one of the places we list with called to say that they’d received a booking from an Italian family who’d booked one of our non-ensuite rooms and then amended the booking to say that they’d be bringing along their five year old too. When a family books our ensuite double and then adds a child that’s OK but it just ain’t possible to put three people in the non-ensuites.

So what’s happened with the booking? Well, we’ve just received it and it only lists two people with no mention of the child so they’ve probably told the booking site that they’d not bother bringing the child. I think it’s safe to say that the three of them will be turning up on Thursday though but we won’t be able to fit them in.

We also get people booking who’d rather be staying somewhere else which is a bit of a pain for us and for them. On the whole, we’d rather have people staying who actually wanted to be in our quiet place in the vineyards with the views of mountains and Queribus in the distance. We also find that it’s a whole lot easier to deal with people who appreciate this type of area and range of attractions which is why we go to some length to describe everything as completely as possible. Not everyone reads that of course and we get a trickle of people who actually wanted to be in a city but managed to book somewhere with a description that says in the first sentence it’s 20 minutes outside Perpignan. Sometimes that’s OK and they appreciate the change but sometimes it isn’t and we’ve had several recently who just hated the area and consequently gave us a terrible review criticising us for being in the countryside and not having nightclubs nearby. The worst, so far, was an english lady who seemed to only know one word: “disgusting”! She booked a twin room (the only one still available) then complained that it wasn’t a double, complained that we weren’t at the beach, complained that the room wasn’t ready (despite arriving before checkin time), complained that it was overpriced (despite being under half the price of the place she’d stayed in the night before),…. and then stormed off, attempting to damage our property by firing stones from her screeching tyres. Funnily enough we were able to rebook the room and, despite her insulting and aggressive attitude followed our policy of refunding the charge less the costs we incurred (though we were sorely tempted not to!). So instead of a total ******* staying we had a very nice French family who’ll probably be back someday.

Arnold

One thing that accompanies the high level of bookings at this time in August is the equally high level of cancellations.

People obviously have great difficulty in getting booked in anywhere at the moment so we think that they try to book in a few places simultaneously and then cancel those that aren’t quite where they want to be or are going to take too long to reach with the traffic levels. Whatever the reason, the number of cancellations goes up quite sharply.

One thing that people forget though is that if they want to cancel without charge then they sometimes need to cancel a considerable period in advance. We’re at the more lenient end of the scale by requiring (in most cases) 24 hours notice but I’ve seen as long as 7 days notice being required. Actually, we’re even more laid back than that as we’ll refund any charges taken if we can rebook the room which isn’t the case at most hotels.

The reason for the 24 hour period is simple: it’s to give us a chance to rebook the room. So, for the most part, the 24 hour notice period applies to sites which do “next day” booking ie you can’t book and turn up the same day. Net effect of the next day booking regime is that if you get a cancellation on Monday for a booking on Monday on one of those systems then you won’t get another booking from them for the same room. For most of the year that doesn’t really matter as the room will have remained listed on other sites but during peak periods we need to close down reservations most days ie if we get a cancellation then the room hasn’t remained listed elsewhere and we’re unlikely to book it. That sounds a bit peculiar to a lot of people who just assume that “obviously” we’ll get the room filled and perhaps that’s true for city-centre hotels but, for the most part, we don’t get people just dropping in asking for a room so if it’s not listed, it’s not sold.

The other thing that people forget is that we are charged if they cancel with under 24 hours notice. The sites that we get most bookings from are commission based ones who will charge us for any cancellations received with less than 24 hours notice given and, no, we can’t just tell them that we were notified a few days in advance as they obviously know when we put the cancellation in and they can (and do) check with the guests too.

Arnold

A week ago we thought that the coming week would be relatively quiet as the bookings were quite patchy but we received quite a flood of bookings during the week and are just about completely full now. We had three new bookings this morning before the breakfasts were over!

That seems to be typical over most of France at the moment going by the enquiries flowing through Chambre d’Hote and Our Gites in recent weeks, some of which have the whiff of panic about them. However, there are some regions with accommodation availability at the moment if you look outside the normal places around France. They aren’t dumps either – friends of ours still have availability in their absolutely beautiful chambre d’hote in Burgundy.

As usual, next week will probably be quite different as the French will be finishing off their holidays next Saturday night leaving French accommodation available for everyone else for the first time since around mid-July. Thus, chaos can be expected on the roads up to the end of next weekend. That’s worrying me a bit as I have to catch a plane to Santiago from Barcelona next Friday.

Must head on – yet another night of mainly overnighters has left us with five rooms to makeup for this evening. Thankfully most of the bookings for the coming week are for several days.

Arnold