Walking is easy compared to trying to get a room in Madrid over the next few days, which right now for us is just about impossible. Of course one wouldn’t think that, but it it’s a national holiday and after several days and many hours we found nothing. Perhaps if we spent four hundreds dollars a night we might find something, but that is only a “might”. The city is booked. If you’ve ever been to Madrid you know there are hotel rooms everywhere. I mean everywhere. But we cannot find anything. Nothing. It is hard to believe. We could probably keep looking, but now, we are ruining our trip by spending so MANY HOURS online looking.
This all started a few days ago when we started trying to get a train out of Santiago. There was nothing. Most of the trains were booked. We found a few at strange times that took around ten hours. The fast trains get there in less than six hours. After we realized trains would be hard to find, we decided to switch over to looking for a room in Madrid. That’s when disaster struck. No rooms. No trains. Days and hours looking and nothing. Not the way we had planned on spending the last few days of our trip.
Santiago is currently packed with pilgrims. All the rooms here are booked. Not sure how we managed to find three straight nights here at the same hotel. I did remind them that we had stayed at this hotel before. Not sure if that helped anyway. The thing is, with all the pilgrims here it is fun. Seeing all the different people. All the people here are not really a complaint. Everyone adds to the good spirits here.
What is our final plan? To stay in Santiago still another day and take an overnight train Tuesday to Madrid. From the train station we will go straight to the airport. We had hope to visit some places we like in Madrid, but that isn’t going to happen. Santiago is not at all a place bad place to hang out, but for four days wasn’t the plan.
Next Camino we do we’ll make all train and departing hotel reservations before we leave the U. S. The Caminos seem to be getting just too popular. Of course we’ll continue to do Caminos. It’s just that making reservations shouldn’t be harder than walking the Camino. In the meantime we’re having a blast.
Walking El Camino Inglés...and more 
So…in the future it’s good to check the camino for holidays, etc….this way you’re prepared…correct! In Spain they have lots of holiday’s for everything. They probably have one that saids “Saint Patricia” day…thye probably do…Lol Like you mention, you’re having a blast and that’s what counts….Onward, Vinny
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