Visiting Santiago de Compostela and the challenge of spontaneity

We’ve been travelling for about six weeks now, and planning our trip for over a year. And even though we’ve mapped out our route and planned all our flights and accommodations, there are a lot of things we still need to arrange, such as transportation (buses and trains between cities), since those you can only book a few weeks or months in advance. We also learned in France, that if you wait too long to reserve, the trains fill up quickly. So in the evenings, Jon is constantly researching and then discussing the best options with me before booking things, usually about a month out. We’re also trying to plan our day-to-day adventures, when we’re going out exploring or trying to figure out the details of how to get to tomorrow’s destination. Needless to say, it’s a lot of work and sometimes things creep up on us and catch us off guard.

In Spain, we had to pivot due to the fires, and because we couldn’t go into the mountains as planned, we decided to visit a beach one day instead. We had read about a cool beach with huge rocks you could walk next to on the sand when the tide was out. We thought it sounded cool and decided to check it out. When we arrived, there were people in yellow vests controlling the access. We discovered that it was free to visit this beach, but you had to reserve in advance and it was all booked up for the day. We walked to a nearby (free access) beach instead, but we missed out on the experience.

We ran into a similar problem in Santiago de Compostela, which is packed with pilgrims and tourists, especially in the summer. August is the most popular time of year to walk the Camino, with over 2,000 pilgrims arriving by midday (there is a screen at the welcome centre that tells you how many people have arrived so far that day). Here is a glimpse of the crowds out front around noon:

We had started to read about visiting the city and its famous cathedral more than a week before we arrived but never booked anything. As it got closer, we decided that the funnest option for us would be a rooftop tour, but realized that we needed to reserve several days in advance. All the tours were booked on the days we planned to be there. Furthermore, on the day we visited the city, we had decided that morning to go to one of four daily masses, and got in line for the noon service about 10 minutes in advance only to discover the line snaked around half of the (massive) building and we were too far back to make it inside. The next one wasn’t till 7:30pm. Too late for us.

Here is what the line looks like from above:

In both cases, we found solutions. For the mass, we went back the next day, and showed up early for the 9 AM service. It was an early morning start, but at 7:50 AM we were treated to the sunrise from our Airbnb, which was about 20 minutes outside of town.

When we showed up, the town was quiet, and a family that had done the Camino on horseback had just arrived. (The only time to come into the hold city on a horse is early in the morning).

The cathedral wasn’t even full for the service.

But by the time we came out, there was a lineup.

For the rooftop tour, we got lucky. We decided to go back into Santiago after our trip to Portugal on our way back into Spain (about five days later). It was a small detour, but worked out really well because it was a nice way to break up the drive that day, which was about five hours. So we say goodbye to Santiago, but then went back!

The rooftop tour was really cool and allowed for some impressive views:

Nowadays everything gets booked in advance, which is convenient but means we can’t always be spontaneous. I’m hoping this will be a “Europe in the summer” thing, but it could just be a reality of travelling in 2025. Gone are the days when you could just show up somewhere and be a casual tourist. As we go along, hopefully we’ll get better at it. It’s also a reminder to return to the original plans of this adventure: living simply, spending time together, making it about the journey, not the destination. (Except maybe when your destination has been on your bucket for 22 years!)