So, via Air Canada, with a rubber chicken supper, two movies, and 8 uncomfortable hours, we were magically transported from Toronto to Rome. Getting a SIM card and train transport to the city center was a lot easier than Madrid last year.
We checked into our convent, the Istituto Immacolata Concezione Nostra Signora di Lourdes (Motto: In God We Trust, but guests pay in advance, in cash). Very quiet, central, large room, no tv, two single beds at opposite ends of the room (it IS an ex convent, after all), and a modern bathroom that so far doesn’t leak (see my opinions from last year on “European modern” bathrooms).
After unpacking we hit the local Chinese-run Italian restaurant for our first pizza of the day. When an adjacent table questioned the provenance of the wine the proprietor brought him the cardboard cask for inspection. Then we moved on to the first Gelato of the day.
To accomplish at least one tourist objective, a further short walk brought us to the Trevi Fountain – us and most of the other tourists in Rome. The population density increased dramatically as we neared the area. The square, the steps down to the fountain, and everywhere you looked was totally packed with people taking selfies. The historic church on the corner was virtually empty though.
Just try and get a photo at the fountain with only yourselves in it!
Later in the evening we went out for a light meal, and were hauled off the street into a likely looking establishment where we ran into the slow food movement – or at least the slow service part of it. Vic had a salad, I had soup, and we shared a dessert. One and a half hours. But we are on vacation, so who cares?
We are in our hotel near the airport in Madrid. Our final Spanish lunch was in a little restaurant near the hotel full of families having their Sunday lunch, some celebrating special occasions, some just out for their mid-day meal at 3 pm. There was every age group from babies to grannies and the noise level was very high. We had a great final Spanish meal including our vino tinto. Then we came back to the hotel for a post prandial Sunday nap.
A toast to the end of our Camino.
Mark woke us for our Sunday FaceTime chat with them. Can’t wait to see them all tomorrow – a perfect end to our walking holiday. Mark wanted to know if we would like to go for a nice walk on Wednesday as he is taking the day off to spend it with us. ?
Looks like the decision to fly to Madrid instead of London might have made our return trip easier. Heathrow sounds like a zoo today.
Thanks to everyone who came with us through the blog and who helped rally our spirits with their comments when the going was tough.
We had such an inspiring walk. And, Judy, I’m not sure I am planning to do this walk again. Maybe next time in Scotland?
The breakfast surprise this morning was a Pilgrims Egg. It was a glass jar with about a half inch of highly mashed potato with bits of onion, and a poached egg on top. Also apparently with truffle oil, but I didn’t get that taste.
On our way out of Palas de Rei.
It was to be only an 8 km walk today, so even including a late breakfast chatting with other pilgrims, coffee stops chatting with other pilgrims, we still arrived at our lodgings around noon.
When we arrive at our hotel every day, the sight we most want to see is our luggage sitting in the foyer with all the others that have been delivered for other walkers.
Vic had significant apprehensions about this establishment as it was in (near) a very small village, not on our agent’s normal route, and the picture provided was, well, unassuming at best. It turned out to be a super, newish resort that would sit well in Arizona.
Canadian and American pilgrims at our hotel.
We spent the afternoon on the patio chatting with new pilgrim friends (from Canada) and having a three course meal with the customary bottle of wine.
A cabaceiro, a woven thatched grain storage structure. This is what you need, Johanne, for drying beans?
Our room is spacious with a good bathroom. The walls are three feet thick stone, but, as we found out when the people upstairs moved in, the ceiling is one inch thick. It is going to be a noisy night if they don’t stop rearranging the furniture. They have been at it for an hour.
After the heat of the day reduced we walked into the next town, Leboreiro, about a half km away to see the Church of Santa Maria. It was locked of course, but peering through a small back window I could see that it was stacked with cardboard boxes of wine glasses. They must hold a fun communion there.
The church in Leboreiro with the wandering Virgin.
There is a legend attached to the church. Apparently a spring that glowed at night suddenly emerged. In digging for the source of the spring the villagers came across a statue of the Virgin which they placed in the chapel. Each night the statue returned to the spring, and the villagers had to move it back. They finally discovered that she wished to be outside, so they carved her image on the tympanum where you can see it today, and the statue remained at the altar, where it is said, she has the satisfied smile of someone who has gotten what she wants.
Well remembered from twelve years ago.
The town is one I remember as it has a large arrow made of yellow scallop shells on the wall of one of the houses pointing the way to Santiago.
A rather lovely house along the way. I liked the air conditioner on the second level.
The forecast for today was warm and cloudy with a 30% chance of rain. We rounded that down to zero and left our rain gear in the suitcases.
Some of the old places are quaintly in need of repair.
Since it was to be a 24 km day, and we have come to the realization that we are 18 km people, we took a taxi for the first 6 km. We learned the lesson in walking out of Leon that there was no moral fibre to be gained by an extra hour of walking through city industrial areas. We have already taken enough shortcuts to risk our time in purgatory anyway – another 6 km can’t make a difference. That put us in Fuentes Nuevas, fresh and eager to tackle the countryside.
The walking was much easier today even if it was a lot of uphill.
As we walked through the day the agriculture turned to vineyards, but with fields of individual vine stumps, not on trellises or wires. Most were beginning to bud, or with a bit of growth, but showing signs of an earlier spurt, now dead.
The vines here look like very old stumps but they must work.
At the time for morning coffee, we happened on an agricultural co-op bodega that was offering wine and tapas, our first of the day. The wine area is known as Bierzo – look for it in your local wine outlet.
Ten AM wine tasting at the Bierzo wine co-op.
We had good luck with churches, finding several open today. The retablos are less ornate than further east, and decoration runs more to statues of saints, and of the various manifestations of Mary. Once again Vic is helping me with saint identification.
Loved the brick and stone work here.More frescos in this church than others.
As the day progressed it got hotter, and the last hour took a couple hours – or it seemed like it.
Loved the look of this place on a hill.
Villafranca del Bierzo is a less typical Camino town, in that it has a number of streets, although the Camino does run down the middle. It is built on a hill so there are a lot of up and down streets, and walking up and down is not easy right now.
The Day of Reckoning (first day of walking) dawned at 5°C, partly cloudy with a strong cool wind. As we entered the town we saw the first of this year’s Characters of the Camino – a young couple coming toward the albergue, barefoot, carrying bindle sticks and looking like they had just spent the night sleeping rough.
As promised we started today with yesterday’s pilgrim.
After a few kilometers we took the (alternative) road less travelled, and branched off to follow the old Roman road rather than the new track by the super highway. The track was built when the highway went in and consists of more than 20 km of gravel path with trees planted along it for shade. On the part we saw most of the trees looked dead. The old Roman road was a wider gravel road with few trees and not much else – at least there was no super highway traffic. There are still the original Roman stadia markers on the side of the road. We ate a snack by an abandoned swimming pool on the side of an otherwise uninhabited road. The Camino is full of surprises.
We walked.Till our goal was in sight.
We arrived at our hotel in Calzadilla de Los Hermanillos just after noon – with a whole afternoon left that we could have been walking! The 15 km today was enough of a starter day, as our legs are tired enough. Tomorrow will be at least 50% longer, and the day after that longer still.
And we could sit down in the courtyard of our hotel for today’s bocadillo and a beer.
We took part of the afternoon and walked around the town. It is very clean, appears prosperous, and as we have seen in these towns before, not a living thing apparent.
There are two churches, both of 16th century brick construction. The larger is closed. The smaller, Ermita de la Virgen de los Dolores, is probably not really a full fledged church, but a chapel used as a church by the town. It is only large enough for a single row of pews, but it is a lovely chapel, and has a very small retablo, with a nicely carved central pieta.
This being May, the month of Mary, a dozen or so of the very most elderly ladies of the town, plus a couple younger ones that were only grey haired, get together every evening at 5 to recite the rosary. We attended with a couple other pilgrims. I have to credit Vic with my continuing religious education.
Ermita de la Virgen de Los Dolores in Calzadilla de Los Hermanillos – our first church on this port in of the Camino, but probably not the last.
This is our last full day in Toronto. Tomorrow we fly to Madrid. We are enjoying our time with Charlene, Mark and Ivy, and can I say, especially Ivy. She has decided that her Grampa is the best and he is the first to be given her ball, or a book to read or a bit of food she no longer wants. We have graduated to being allowed a good night kiss before naps and bedtime. And the word that is used most and to great effect is “NO”, spoken clearly and with feeling.
We are just about ready to walk again. We fly to Toronto on April 28 and then on to Madrid on May 3. The plan is to start walking on May 5 from Sahagun which is just about where we stopped walking in October. I don’t want to go back to where we actually stopped walking. The memories from there aren’t great and I’m not going back there.
I suppose we aren’t really just about ready, just working towards that. We are still cleaning house for the house sitters and the packing hasn’t really started. We have 5 days before we leave. Panic is setting in. But the plane leaves at 6 am on April 28 and we will be on it no matter what.
What did Stacey say about a sun-dappled courtyard? It’s October now and I need mitts in the sun-dappled , etc.
I know that Ivy has nothing to do with Frómista but you did want to see these, didn’t you?
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When we first looked outside before dawn this morning it was teeming with rain and the Camino beneath our window was flowing with water. We made a quick executive decision to not walk and to find alternate transport. The 28 km was going to be too much anyway, and in the rain – way too, too much. We are too old to slip and fall on a slippery rock. The weather fined up over the day though, and it never did rain again.
The internet said there was a bus going our direction, but only at 6 PM, so we got the breakfast cook to arrange a taxi for 10 AM. We did see a few hearty pilgrims plod past, but not many. We assumed God would not deduct too heavily from our Purgatory reduction for the distance we have not walked.
There are things we did miss by taking a taxi. There is the initial long walk up and over a high ridge that we definitely missed. There is a thick vein of mica on the way up that was mined by the Romans, although I have no idea why the Romans would need a supply of a good electrical insulator.
We missed the town of Boadilla del Camino which I’m sure has a lovely church with a baroque gilded retablo. It is also apparently surrounded by unique dovecotes. The doves serve three purposes: they eat insects, they fertilize the fields with droppings, and they themselves are good to eat. Images on the internet show they are relatively large buildings with multi-tiered roofs. No sense you missing out just because we didn’t go there.
The Camino then apparently follows a canal that was begun in the 1750s as a major irrigation and transport project. It never succeeded as transport because of the introduction of railways, just as happened elsewhere in the world, but has provided water and water power even up to today. The locks at Frómista are just a trickle because the water is used for electrical generation.
Frómista itself, where we arrived fresh from the taxi ride at 11 AM, looks different than the previous towns. It is much more open and appears newer. A book says there is no local rock, and cut stone for the church had to be brought in at great expense. It seems most of the building construction is brick, and I think that implies that the medieval adobe construction just didn’t last, and what we see is much newer. It also has allowed the streets to become a modern width.
There are three major churches, all more Romanesque than others previously. Iglesia de San Martin dates from 1066, and is built in the style of the Jaca Cathedral – whatever that style is, it is said to be the purest example extant. In particular it has a large number (400+) of carved capitals and corbels. They are in remarkable condition, so I think they are a result of a c. 1900 complete restoration. It is very spare, with virtually no interior decoration (other than the capitals). There is a very good 16th century Santiago statue, and they appear to have a mini swinging censer, a la the cathedral in Santiago.
The great pulse of some 300 nose-to-tail pilgrims that left St Jean that morning some three weeks ago and arrived as a group at Roncesvalles that night is now spread out evenly over the 25 or 30 km of each stage of the Camino. They are also probably much reduced in number. Many had prearranged a shortened walk and gone home (e.g., the Irish contingent), and many have dropped out because of health reasons (the buzzards circling over the Pyrenees come to mind). As we walk, looking ahead or back a kilometre we can only see a half a dozen or so pilgrims. Fewer people pass us, or we them. We now all go at much the same rate. The colourful cast of characters has been reduced – we no longer see the people with kids, or the Aussie in bare feet, or the back slapping young lads at the bars. What remains are a more sober group of plodders. We have a different set of friends we chat with every day: the elderly Brazilian fellow with the bad Achilles tendon; the rather devout retired Korean, Kim; the Canadian teacher and his South American wife. We will miss them when we (or they) take a rest day and a different group forms.
It seems that peregrinos feel they must cover every flat surface with rocks from the path.
Vic spent the day yesterday resting her blistered feet and started today in a Tylenol/codeine fog. It lasted most of the 16 km, or until noon anyway. The only coffee stop was a km off track, considered to be too far, so it was a forced march to the hotel. She is among the walking wounded.
Nájera is another small medieval town, this one nestled between a cliff embankment and a river. It has quite a large industrial area that we walked through interminably. There are two churches behind the hotel; one locked, and the other of significant enough historical/religious importance to be behind a 4 euro wall. Its story is rather confusing, but you can look it up.
There were few ups and downs today – it was mostly level gravel farm road through vineyards. The vines are small, but heavily loaded with large bunches of very small blue grapes. They are quite tasty, but full of seeds and of course, they are off limits for sampling. They are apparently not wine ripe yet.
As I walked along today I got to thinking. I remember reading once that most of the gold that the Spanish explorers brought back from the New World rather quickly made its way into the hands of the Church, by donation, taxes, or tythe, where it remained, effectively removing it from the economy. I always thought that meant that it ended up in the basement of the Vatican. However, after seeing all of these Spanish retablos I got to wondering if that Aztec gold ended up being thinly spread over the front of the altars of these many churches. The timing would be about right.
So, doing some mental calculations: if a retablo is 30 meters by 30 meters, that is roughly a thousand square meters of frontal area. However gold leaf is put around every curve of every grape of every bunch on every column, so there must be 5 or 10 times as much actual surface area. Say 10 thousand square meters. Now gold leaf is about a tenth of a micron thick (about 4 millionths of an inch), so, resorting to scientific notation for calculations, that is a volume of about one one-thousandth of a cubic meter, or one litre of gold. Gold has a density of about 20, so that is about 20 kilos of gold per retablo. That is about 600 ounces at $C1500/oz these days – say a round million dollars. A pretty pile of gold for each of (say) a hundred churches, but nothing compare to what the conquistadors brought back. No wonder that one church used gold paint for restoration. So we are still looking at the Vatican basement for the rest…… Things that keep an engineer sane while walking. Somebody should check those figures too, in case I stubbed my toe in the calculations.
We had fish for dinner tonight. And it came without chips. First meal I’ve had without chips, and it was fish! I’ll never figure out the Spanish food.
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