Los Arcos and Logroño

Still with the ups and downs! Yesterday, which was a good bit shorter than today, felt so hard! Maybe the cold moving into my chest contributed, but almost the whole day was a slog. I was sure at the end of the day yesterday that there was no way I was walking to Logroño, and would need to stop in Viana, which was annoying because that would have been only an 18K day but it was the only option before Logroño, a 28 K day. But! Got lots of sleep, felt better this morning, and it was no big thing! In fact the walk to Viana in particular was about as nice or nicer than any stretch so far, with lots of sun, a cool breeze, big vistas and a bigger Spanish sky.

Scored a bed in the municipal, (cheap, publicly run, don’t take reservations), and while the beds are packed in a little it had an ice cold fountain for foot soaking. So nice!!

Hung out this evening with Mike from Iowa, got to a grocery store and also visited the cathedral. These gold-packed Spanish churches! When I looked at the huge, ornate gold retablo (see photo) built around the simple image of a crucified Christ I thought “we humans are obviously crazy, and also so intensely passionate.”

Proud moment for me: saw a pun, in Spanish, on a French phrase and actually got it! Do you?

And!! Saw a sight I was hoping to see, right from the window by my bunk. A stork nesting in a bell tower. They were gone already when I walked in late September last time.Read more