Knowing that we had a shorter walk today (10-11 miles), we slept in (7am instead of 6am), had breakfast at the albergue, and didn’t hit the road until 8:00. We both enjoyed a pretty good night’s sleep.
We planned for a shorter walk today so we could have a short walk into Astorga to have time to enjoy that city. You can’t really take in much if you arrive exhausted late in the afternoon and plan to hike out early the next morning. We arrived at our destination, the Albergue El Encanto, earlier than expected. What a beautiful place! We have our own room and bath with a window overlooking the little street. We even have time to do a little laundry. These short days are nice, almost like a rest day because we have time to explore without an extra night over in the city/town. Although it doesn’t take too long to explore in many of the small towns and villages. We are doubly excited because the WIFI is working well today. Yesterday was a little frustrating because it was just so slow.
It was a very easy walk, with some interesting photo opportunities including a tree that pays homage to the pilgrims: it’s ornamented with a collection of hanging boots. We also kept looking beyond to see the mountains ahead, knowing that in a few days, we’ll be climbing them.
A couple of phone scares today. Sara’s I-Phone blacked out this morning and wouldn’t start up. Since the GPS we rely on, and all our booked reservations are on her phone, this could be a real problem for us. Once we arrived at our destination, she went online with the computer and Googled how to fix a phone with a black screen. Quick reference, good advice, and Sara had things running again in no time. Sigh of relief. Then Evan couldn’t find his phone. We looked everyplace. It had to be in the room – and it was, on the bed, under his hat.
We ate both lunch and dinner at the little restaurant around the corner from El Canto. Most often along the Camino, we have always found groups of pilgrims in the bars and restaurant. This time, when we returned for dinner, we were clearly the only pilgrims in a bar filled with locals enjoying their Sunday afternoon visit. Although they did not approach us for conversation, nor we them given the language barrier, they were very curious and were clearly looking us over. We had told the owner that would be back for dinner, though, so they had one table with two place settings for us. Those at the bar and many at the other tables were not eating, just having drinks. But we enjoyed a pleasant dinner and the waitress (I think was the owners’ wife), who did speak some English, was very nice. Then back to the Albergue for a pleasant night’s rest.
