After a restless Tuesday night of sleep in our hotel I felt a little lost getting up so late after all those early to bed early to rise mornings getting ready for the day’s trek. 
Our hotel was in the desirable part of the cathedral area and it was a buzz of activity all night long on the street below our room. It is pretty common for the Spanish to start their nightlife after nine or ten and then until sunrise, so it wasn’t just the pilgrims celebrating. It was hot last night so we slept with our balcony doors open and it was like trying to sleep in a busy bar. A little different from those nights at an albergue where the lights went out and silence started at ten.
Our hotel was fully booked for the next night, Wednesday, and we had to move to another hotel. Finding lodging becomes harder as this Thursday, Friday and weekend approaches, because school gets out this week, and it is also a holiday celebration of Saint James this weekend. Fortunately we found a very nice hotel and even though it was more money we grabbed it. Unfortunately, it was only available for two nights and fully booked again for the third night we want. We have a flight to Amsterdam Saturday and needed another night there. 
Wednesday morning we went to the Compostela office to have our Camino passport verified and to get our Compostela certificate. The line was not long and we ran into a few people we had seen or walked with on the Camino. You need to fill out a short sign-in form stating where you stated and why you completed the Camino de Santiago. The form that I was given was almost full and there was only one other pilgrim that had started in Saint Jean. Monica said there were more on her sign-in sheet.  
There are only three choices for the reason, religious, spiritual, and vacation. I checked religious and spiritual because I think they are related, but everyone has their own interpretation of the two. 
The Compostela and storage tube were two euros. The additional certificate stating the mileage was an additional three euros. I understand that the fees are not to make money, and for what the Camino de Santiago support people give the pilgrims, it’s well worth it. The mileage certificate was something I wanted for myself just like all my photos and memories. 
After getting our Compostela we attended the noon pilgrim’s mass at the Cathedral Camino de Santiago. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of people touring the inside and outside of the cathedral. We were waiting to go into the church and had our Compostela certificates in tube containers when a tour guide spotted Monica holding hers. He was with a group of about twenty or more older English speaking tourists. The tour guide had a mic and headset and all the tourists had on earphones. The guide explained the pilgrimage and asked where she had begun the Camino. That started a whole slew of questions and she was asked to display her Compostela. Monica was quite the celebrity for a while and it was a fun thing to happen.
At the mass we had hoped to see the incense ceremony seen in the movie The Way, where they swing the incense pot hanging from the ceiling across the alter. We learned that it is always done on Friday nights and sometimes Friday at noon. The Friday after noon is always depending on whether there were enough contributions. Unfortunately, they did not have the ceremony Wednesday, but it was a very moving service anyway. 
We spent most of Wednesday and Thursday walking the streets and enjoying the sights. As I mentioned, there must be hundreds of restaurants and food is very reasonable. Most restaurants have outside seating, which is a great place to people watch. There are gift shops, bakeries, candy shop, and other little speciality stores everywhere. During the afternoon many of the shops close as it is the Spanish tradition of siesta time.
We found out Friday that they had the incense swinging ceremony both at both the noon and 7:30 PM mass on Thursday. No one really knows whether they will have the ceremony because they generally need at least a four hundred euro contribution to have it. Why?
The ceremony was started hundreds of years ago, and it’s original purpose was not necessarily religious but to mask the bad body odor of all the pilgrims crammed into the cathedral. You can smell some of that now from those pilgrims that just arrived here this morning, so you can imagine what it must have been like hundreds of years ago before everyday baths and deodorants. 
I had heard that there was a chance they would have the ceremony on Friday at the noon mass, so I went to the cathedral a little before eleven. The church was already full of tourists and pilgrims, and the seats were already starting to fill up. I asked one of the church attendants if they were going to have the ceremony and where the best place to sit was. He wasn’t about the ceremony and said the best place to sit was in the wing to the left of the alter. 
There were two side by side rows of seating and the very first row closest to the alter was open except for one pilgrim from Singapore. I was shocked that I had found the best spot in the church open. A man and his two young sons later asked me if the open seating next to me was ok to sit in and I said, yes, please sit down. It was about ten minutes later, just before the service started, that I realized I was sitting in a reserved section. The Singaporean told me not to worry about it, so I didn’t.
Just before the service started there was a large procession of priests, police officers, and a few people dressed in suites walk by and sat in seats directly in front of the alter. As it turned out one of the men in the suite was an important politician and they posted four plain clothes guards around the pillars. They stood out like sore thumbs at first with their sunglasses on and their watchfully shifting eyes on the crowd.
It turned out too that one of the priests was an arch bishop who had made a special trip here to conduct the mass. The church was packed too. This was looking good for a incense ceremony! Cross my fingers! 
The service started ten minutes early and the bishop and politician spoke at great length, mostly in Spanish of course. But the bishop did welcome everyone in several different languages, including English. It was about one and at the end of the long mass I had given up hope that they would have the incense ceremony. But, all of a sudden the church attendant moved back the standing crowd nest the front and six to eight robbed man stepped up to near the alter. It’s them, it’s them, the incense swingers!
Wow, it was spiritual, almost magical for me as the organist started playing loud beautiful music. I could actually see him from where I was sitting, way up two-three stories in an opening near the ceiling overlooking the alter. The robbed men rapidly walked up to the thick rope tied to the pillar which was connected to the incense chamber pot and yanked the rope in unison. Up in the air flew the pot and the men pulled hard on the rope again until it stated to swing to the side, further, and further. 
They had announced numerous times that people to put their cameras and phones away and not take pictures during the mass. Everyone had seemed to comply, but it all went out the door when the robbed men stepped out. And that included me! 
If you have seem the movie The Way, you might think it was a Hollywood exaggeration, but the spiritual and beautiful feeling that I felt seeing the movie was minuscule compared to how beautiful it really was to see and hear. 
I think it was especially sensational for me because where I was sitting. The pot began to swing higher and higher and the men had to pull hard in unison to get it higher. I was so close that at first I thought it would hit me, and then it stop right above me, and then well over my head, almost back up to the ceiling. Seeing that beautiful incense pot and hearing that dramatic organ music was so magical, if not spiritual. Wow!
After a while (not long enough for the kid in me) the men slowed down their rhythm and gradually the pot came to a slow swing, and then finally to a stop. You usually don’t hear anything but praying or singing at a catholic mass, but the whole church roared in applause and cheered like it was a fireworks show, and that included me. Wow again! What a beautiful way to end my Camino de Santiago de Compostela Experience. 
I have to say that seeing the ceremony was like the cherry on the topping for me. The days and hours after I finished seemed to be when I actually started to reflect back on trekking the Camino and what a great experience it really was. And as I walked out of the cathedral I actually had goose bumps and watery eyes, and it made me realize that it was an even better experience than I thought it would be. 

Tomorrow, Saturday, Monica and I leave for Amsterdam and have no special plans. Our flight home isn’t until July 6, so we will play it by ear, but basically my trek on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela is over.
In Holland I will feel more comfortable getting around as I speak Dutch, and then again, most Dutch people speak English. 
Until my next trek, best wishes to all,
Ted 

Standing in line to get our Compostela 

The Camino passport

The Camino passport and some of the verification stamps from various places on the Camino. Restaurants, stores, hotels, albergues, etc.

The Compostela with the name in Latin 

The Compostela mileage certificate 

The cathedral

The cathedral 

The tour group that grabbed Monica 

The tour group

Tour group asking Monica questions about the Camino 

A tapa bar where you pick your appetizers like at a sushi bar

Cathedral 

Cathedral 

Cathedral 

The pipes from the giant organ 

The cathedral 

Here come the the men in robs to swing the pot

Filling the pot 

Pulling the pot

The robbed men

The pot starting to swing

The pot swing over my head