Our Camino was completed—just in a different way than usual. As planned, my son and I set off from the harbor steps of Ferrol on September 12, between a group of eight pilgrims and a couple. At the end of the day as we were intently looking for signs to the Hotel Kensington, I stumbled when the sidewalk split into lower and upper levels and, propelled forward by a too heavy backpack, fell face down on the pavement. Yes, the results were disastrous with the bone under my eye broken and half my face swollen, bruised and cut. However, there has been no damage to eye itself or my vision, and I am now well on the way to mending, except for the strange colors on my face.
I write not for sympathy but to assure you that if anything goes wrong, you will find instant support and sympathy from the Galicians. As soon as I fell, passers-by stopped to help and called both the police and an ambulance. Shopkeepers came out with cloths to wipe the blood from my face and clothes. I was at the hospital back in Ferrol within 15 minutes of my fall (talk about backtracking), immediately seen in the emergency room and had CT scans within an hour or so. When the scans revealed a fracture, the hospital arranged a consultation with specialists at a university hospital in A Coruna and transport there. In A Coruna, I was overwhelmed with expressions of sympathy and help finding a hotel and contacting the US consulate to rearrange flights. Of course, most importantly but not surprising to me, my doctors here confirmed that I had received excellent care in Ferrol and A Coruna. So be reassured that if anything goes wrong, the Galicians will take care of you. I would have been happy to remain in Spain for my medical care, but my insurance company was not, so I returned to the US.
Since our camino was so short, we have only a few comments to pass on.
1-The CSJ guide and waymarks for the first day are very clear—of course, in retrospect, explicit directions to the Hotel Kensington would have been nice so I could have concentrated only on the sidewalk and not signs
2- We used the Tourist Information booth at the harbor steps to sign our credentials. They did not have the accommodations list or phrasebook that Johnnie Walker mentioned, but they did have a good map out of town and the beautiful Xunta booklet. It opens at 10:00, but I forgot the closing hours.
3-The McDonalds may be ‘unpilgrim-like’ as Johnnie Walker says, but the restaurant was spotless, its bathrooms clean and the Chicken Wrap pretty good
4-The Lidl’s next to the McDonald’s sells most items in big packages so was not useful for provisions—we could not find any energy bars or the like at all
5-El Suizo in Ferrol, on Calle de Dolores east of Praxa Ambrose, is a lovely hotel in a restored building on a pedestrian street with helpful and friendly staff. It is not so far from the harbor that we resented walking down to the harbor and then back past the hotel when we started our pilgrimage
6-O Pincho also on Calle de Dolores and a block east of the El Suizo hotel has good tapas. Most come with potatoes; however, the potatoes were roasted, not fried, and quite good. There were several other restaurants nearby.
7-There is an internet café on Rua Sol, two blocks north and a block or two east of the hotel El Suizo
8-We flew between London and A Coruna. Because our arriving flight got in at 20:00, we stayed at the Hotel Moon before going to Ferrol the next day. Very clean, good price, helpful receptionist, near train and bus stations but far from A Coruna sights
9-After discharge from the hospital, we opted for a less spartan hotel nearer the center of town and were pleased with the NH Hotel Atlantico. It is more expensive and definitely set up for business travelers, but its 10 Euro buffet dinners were tasty and a good value.
10-There are several buses a day between A Coruna and Ferrol. Choose carefully. We opted for the “bird-in-the-hand” approach and took the first bus instead of waiting ½ hour for a bus that went directly to Ferrol. Ours went through Betanzos, Mino and Pontedeume. Going through those towns first might have spoiled the walk—as it turned out, we would not have seen them otherwise.
11-We sent luggage ahead to the Pension Badalada in Santiago de Compostela for storage there, so we could have clean, non-hiking clothes for the remainder of our trip. Beware of customs charges if you ship from the US instead of dropping it off yourself. We ended up paying 25.50 Euros as customs duty. (I assume there would have been no customs duty if shipped from another Eurozone country.) The Pension handled the matter correctly. They refused to accept delivery of our luggage and did not pay the customs fee. That saved us the Pension’s storage fee. Since the Pension kept the delivery receipt for us, we had no trouble retrieving our luggage from the post office. Again, the Pension provides good service, and the trip down to Santiago to retrieve the luggage did at least get us to the cathedral.
We did stop at the Pilgrim office to see Johnnie Walker, but the stairs were filled with tired pilgrims wanting their well-earned compostelas, so we did not go up to look for him.
12-Don’t overlook A Coruna. If you have the time, it is worth a day of sightseeing. We spent several days there after my fall recovering and rearranging flights. The city is large and spread out, but has lots of parks and plazas to sit in, pretty plantings, a small but interesting old town, pleasing architecture and sculptures, a Picasso walking tour (he lived in A Coruna as a child), the oldest working lighthouse in the world (the Tower of Hercules built by the Romans in the 1st century) and lots of waterfront views, including a fabulous and lengthy promenade along the harbor and Atlantic Coast. We concluded that A Coruna was a very livable city.
Buen Camino
CMSmith
I write not for sympathy but to assure you that if anything goes wrong, you will find instant support and sympathy from the Galicians. As soon as I fell, passers-by stopped to help and called both the police and an ambulance. Shopkeepers came out with cloths to wipe the blood from my face and clothes. I was at the hospital back in Ferrol within 15 minutes of my fall (talk about backtracking), immediately seen in the emergency room and had CT scans within an hour or so. When the scans revealed a fracture, the hospital arranged a consultation with specialists at a university hospital in A Coruna and transport there. In A Coruna, I was overwhelmed with expressions of sympathy and help finding a hotel and contacting the US consulate to rearrange flights. Of course, most importantly but not surprising to me, my doctors here confirmed that I had received excellent care in Ferrol and A Coruna. So be reassured that if anything goes wrong, the Galicians will take care of you. I would have been happy to remain in Spain for my medical care, but my insurance company was not, so I returned to the US.
Since our camino was so short, we have only a few comments to pass on.
1-The CSJ guide and waymarks for the first day are very clear—of course, in retrospect, explicit directions to the Hotel Kensington would have been nice so I could have concentrated only on the sidewalk and not signs
2- We used the Tourist Information booth at the harbor steps to sign our credentials. They did not have the accommodations list or phrasebook that Johnnie Walker mentioned, but they did have a good map out of town and the beautiful Xunta booklet. It opens at 10:00, but I forgot the closing hours.
3-The McDonalds may be ‘unpilgrim-like’ as Johnnie Walker says, but the restaurant was spotless, its bathrooms clean and the Chicken Wrap pretty good
4-The Lidl’s next to the McDonald’s sells most items in big packages so was not useful for provisions—we could not find any energy bars or the like at all
5-El Suizo in Ferrol, on Calle de Dolores east of Praxa Ambrose, is a lovely hotel in a restored building on a pedestrian street with helpful and friendly staff. It is not so far from the harbor that we resented walking down to the harbor and then back past the hotel when we started our pilgrimage
6-O Pincho also on Calle de Dolores and a block east of the El Suizo hotel has good tapas. Most come with potatoes; however, the potatoes were roasted, not fried, and quite good. There were several other restaurants nearby.
7-There is an internet café on Rua Sol, two blocks north and a block or two east of the hotel El Suizo
8-We flew between London and A Coruna. Because our arriving flight got in at 20:00, we stayed at the Hotel Moon before going to Ferrol the next day. Very clean, good price, helpful receptionist, near train and bus stations but far from A Coruna sights
9-After discharge from the hospital, we opted for a less spartan hotel nearer the center of town and were pleased with the NH Hotel Atlantico. It is more expensive and definitely set up for business travelers, but its 10 Euro buffet dinners were tasty and a good value.
10-There are several buses a day between A Coruna and Ferrol. Choose carefully. We opted for the “bird-in-the-hand” approach and took the first bus instead of waiting ½ hour for a bus that went directly to Ferrol. Ours went through Betanzos, Mino and Pontedeume. Going through those towns first might have spoiled the walk—as it turned out, we would not have seen them otherwise.
11-We sent luggage ahead to the Pension Badalada in Santiago de Compostela for storage there, so we could have clean, non-hiking clothes for the remainder of our trip. Beware of customs charges if you ship from the US instead of dropping it off yourself. We ended up paying 25.50 Euros as customs duty. (I assume there would have been no customs duty if shipped from another Eurozone country.) The Pension handled the matter correctly. They refused to accept delivery of our luggage and did not pay the customs fee. That saved us the Pension’s storage fee. Since the Pension kept the delivery receipt for us, we had no trouble retrieving our luggage from the post office. Again, the Pension provides good service, and the trip down to Santiago to retrieve the luggage did at least get us to the cathedral.
We did stop at the Pilgrim office to see Johnnie Walker, but the stairs were filled with tired pilgrims wanting their well-earned compostelas, so we did not go up to look for him.
12-Don’t overlook A Coruna. If you have the time, it is worth a day of sightseeing. We spent several days there after my fall recovering and rearranging flights. The city is large and spread out, but has lots of parks and plazas to sit in, pretty plantings, a small but interesting old town, pleasing architecture and sculptures, a Picasso walking tour (he lived in A Coruna as a child), the oldest working lighthouse in the world (the Tower of Hercules built by the Romans in the 1st century) and lots of waterfront views, including a fabulous and lengthy promenade along the harbor and Atlantic Coast. We concluded that A Coruna was a very livable city.
Buen Camino
CMSmith
