10:00 Mon.

26 Oct, 2020

Camino de Santiago #4

Holla Spain

Tags: camino de santiago, floor heating, Spain, tui

°C

12:00 am

Next morning Jakob and I went through the old city again, as I didn’t saw it yet. It was truly magnificent, haven’t seen fortress on so many levels before. After about an hour of walking on the high wall and through some tunnels and underpass we were on the other side, the only thing separating us from Spain was a long bridge over the river. Soon after we were able to say ¡Hola Espagne!

Eating breakfast before leaving. As usually, we were the last to leave.

Bought some weird apples (at least for me, the weird part was, how big they were).

We are still laughing about this lemon today (October). He carried it for 5 days at least, and not only were there thousands of lemons all over the place

not sure what I was trying to achieve here.

It took us 5 days to reach Spain, about 125 km were behind us and about 140 ahead of us. The first city on Spanish side was Tui, we didn’t spend much time there but continued walking. We were pretty lucky with the weather so far, it has been more or less clear sky, well until now. The weather forecast for today was some scattered storms, luckily it wasn’t as bad as we were afraid. It only rained on us enough, so we unpacked all our rain coats and waterproof gear and then it stopped after about 10 minutes. Still, we were happy when we reached our destination, O Pporino, it was relatively easy day, just 20 km.

Half selfie, as Aljoša was ahead of us, since he already saw the old city.

Eating some Spanish pastries in the middle of the forest. Mmmm.

Haha, Jakob looks so funny with that hump from his backpack.

This was an optional stop, which at the beginning we weren’t planning to make, but since the weather wasn’t the best and the next stop Redondela, was additional 15 km away, we decided there was no point in hurrying and stopped here, and wow, we weren’t sorry.

We were back to CET timezone, which meant it was getting dark one hour earlier.

The albergue in O Pporino was amazing, it must have been quite new, no more than 10 years old, had actual floor heating! The downside was, that it had no kitchen utensils. Supposedly people didn’t clean them enough and people started to get sick, so there was some law, that forbade albergues from having them, supposedly for whole Galicia – which is basically the whole north-western part of Spain. Luckily in a couple of days, this turned out not to be true. Though we were quite sad about it, and since we knew that Spain was more expensive than Portugal, I was already carrying couple kgs of pasta.

Arbergues in Spain were 3€ more expensive, but man, were they nice. This one had floor heating, and couldn’t have been older than 5 years.

Next day was nothing truly remarkable, the weather was so-so, so we had to walk a bit in the rain, nothing too bad though. We reached our next destination Redondela in early afternoon. What was exciting about it was that the albergue was in an old defence tower in the city centre. We were quite excited to sleep in it, although to be fair, when we actually saw it, it wasn’t as poetic as it sounded.

If everything was nicely set for pilgrims in Portugal, it was nothing compared to Spain, here it was truly amazing.

Don’t remember what store was selling, but you could get the stamp inside.

Pit stop on a bus stop. Don’t know how, but I remember we were discussing how much milk a cow produces and how long it can do so. It ended up, that Aljoša had to call Ajda (his wife) to settle the dispute. The numbers are amazing, or scary, depending how you look at it.

The albergue was without kitchen utensils again, so we decided to try to buy a pot or at least pan in the local supermarket. As it turned out, it was mission impossible. As it seems in Spain they only sell kitchen utensils in some specialized stores, and since it was Saturday afternoon when we went on this mission they were all closed, as opposed to the supermarkets that are open until 9 or 10 pm. I must say, I was really annoyed but it, much more than Aljoša and Jakob, maybe it was that kg of pasta that I was carrying for 35 km already.

Since it was still early afternoon, and the sky cleared up, I again went for a run on a nearby hill with nice views. In the evening we sat down the table and played some games – yes, Jakob actually brought Settlers of the Catan board game with him, not the whole box, but just playing pieces. We were laughing at him about it at the beginning, but I must admit, it felt pretty awesome to play the game, in the following days we actually managed to though the game to some other pilgrims.

The tower – well, not really sure if this can be called tower.

Views from a hill above the city were really great. It was worth running up again.

Playing board games in the evening. Also LoL, I’m in my jacket, with a winter hat on me, while Aljoša is besides me in short sleeves.

By this time, we were already quite friendly with some other people, primarily women, that were hiking approximately the same tempo as us. While during the day each group walked separately, we were hanging out in the afternoons / evenings. It was really fun.

Jakob slicing some salami. It was quite fun, and way too much wine was drank this evening.

The next day was nothing exceptional either, the path lead us through some villages, near the coast. It rained for most of the day, so that took all the joy from the hike that day. When we reached Pontevedra in about 20 km. The albergue was again very nice, with floor heating, but what was even better, it had kitchen utensils! I don’t remember, when was the last time I was so happy to eat pasta – plain pasta without a sauce that is. Note: I have (or rather had) something of begrudge against it (all kinds of pasta), since in my childhood, we ate it literary every other day... We spend the evening playing the board games again and talking with our friends, it was a nice end to a mediocre day. Also, Aljoša bought a couple of slices of the expensive Iberrian prosciutto in Redondela and today was the day we tried it!