Arriving in Sarria, ready for the Camino de Santiago

It’s 5 am in the morning. Way too early… The train to the airport leaves at 7 am from Karlsruhe Central Station and as usual, my parents wanted to be there way before time. Because the Deutsche Bahn is famous to be ‘punctual’ (well, at least it usually is so early in the morning) and there’s so much traffic in Karlsruhe at 6 am in the morning… I’m more of a last minute packing and leaving kind of person, but no need to argue. Or rather: no CHANCE to argue.

Anyways, we were more than on time and had so much time left in Frankfurt that we didn’t even know what to do with ourselves.

It was a Lufthansa flight but on a very simple plane without an entertainment system or even charging cables. Nothing at all. Hmpf. But OK, it’s only a 2 hr flight.

It was raining when we landed in Santiago but luckily it stopped the moment we got out of the airport. Which lasted for an entire week!

We were even lucky enough to find a bus still standing there but were not entirely sure where it went. I had Spanish for one semester but except for “Hola”, “Si si claro” and “No habla Espanol”, there’s hardly anything I remember. Luckily, some of the fellow Germans around us knew Spanish to help us out.

There are two options for buses: one directly from the airport to Lugo – for which we would have to wait for hours – and earlier ones from the bus station in Santiago. We’ve also read that it’s better to take the ones from the bus station to get a seat as it can be quite full.

To the bus station we went and with the help of these Germans (means: stalking them and doing exactly what they did), we got tickets to Sarria.

For those of you who want to do this and are as confused as we were:

1) The bus timings you found online are most likely not correct. I felt a bit like in India.

2) The shuttle buses from the airport with “central ciudad” written on them are going to the bus station (costs 3 EUR).

3) To get a ticket at the bus station, go upstairs. There’s an info counter where you can ask.

4) If you have to go to Sarria: There’s a direct bus to Sarria (costs around 13 EUR) and one to Lugo where you would have to change buses again.

The small bistro at the bus station was very good and super cheap by the way. Even the washrooms were decent. And most importantly: there are power plugs to charge your phone!

The bus to Sarria leaves from downstairs. I didn’t see it written on the ticket where it holds but there are not many options anyway and the bus driver yells where he’s going. There are seat numbers on the tickets which we learned were to be ignored. Again I felt like (India) home. Not because of the standard of the bus though, it was really nice, clean and comfy. Unfortunately with tinted windows so that pictures become rather bluish.

It took around 2 hrs to reach Sarria and I loved the bus ride!! I wished that we would pass these places again but unfortunately, they were South of the Camino (the bus went via Chantada and Montforte de Lemos). You have a lovely view of the reservoir at Pesqueiras – in general, this part of the journey is the best, passing by vineyards on the hills – so make sure you don’t doze off 😉

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Reaching Sarria, we had to, first of all, find our Hotel Alfonso IX. It’s apparently very popular among pilgrims and I can definitely recommend it. It’s around 1 km from the bus stop and easy to reach on foot. It was just annoying having to carry the trolley behind us as it’s slightly uphill at times.

Now it was time to explore Sarria a bit 🙂