The Snails go on the Shelf

Today I woke up when the 3 Frenchmen left the Alburgue because my bed faced the bathroom which had its light switch on the outside of the door , so there really was no possible way for anyone to use it without shining a white bright light directly onto my pillow.

This was actually quite good for me though because I hadn’t set an alarm and there was a lot of walking today so I tried my best to go through my morning routine without waking others up which felt like opening a bag of chips in a movie theater because my I had so much gear made of rain jacket kind of material .

The route passed 3 small villages, but mostly went through farmland and vineyards. Maybe 3 miles into the about 18 mile day, I heard someone walking behind me at a slightly quicker pace and it really wasn’t that much quicker because it took them about 5 minutes of slightly quicker crunchy to finally meet up beside. I recognized him from the Alburgue the night before. I ask him his name, which was Luis, and if I could join him for a bit. I wanted to see if I could keep his pace. We actually ended up walking together the rest of the day so I ended up in the hostel destination in Santarém before anyone else. He is almost finished with Architecture in Innsbrook Austria but is doing an optional study abroad program in Madrid.

On the way we passed a large conglomerate? Coagulation? Of snails on a concrete post. There was a second concrete post the formed the other half of the entry’s way to a vineyard. This too had snails. But less, so no picture of that one. No other areas had snails. Very curious.

I appreciated immensely all of the birthday wishes that I received today! It was really nice to see and respond along the way during breaks!

I feel like there is maybe some kind of omen to snails on shelf. But it’s quite late so I could really use some suggestions? Hopefully not predicting impending flooding or something. I think I correctly counted 25 snails though on that lower forward facing shelf. If you have any thoughts, please let me know!

Probably the best I can say with a collected 25 whole years of wisdom now, is that life always has many mysteries.Read more