No shame, all gain: Camino Part II

Leon, Spain, Thursday night, June 14; we're ready to start walking tomorrow.

Ellie has arrived! Gina and I have found these lovely refreshing lemon beers here in Spain, and we happily introduced them to Ellie this evening.

Yesterday Gina and I walked about 11 or 12 kilometers from Orbaneja to Burgos and arrived around 11 am. Burgos' population is about 180,000; walking into such a large metropolitan area was a bit of a shock to the system. Much of the Camino was along a wide multi-lane road, lined with wholesale shops, a Bridgestone factory, and car lots, with big trucks zooming past.

Burgos is beautiful and well worth a visit. We had time to see the UNESCO World Heritage site cathedral (the audio tour wore us out) and to visit the museum of human evolution, which was a treat. Also, we must have seen or ran into at least eight people who we've met so far, so Burgos felt like a small town. We wondered who we would bump into every time we turned a corner.

We stayed at a small albergue in the middle of town, near the cathedral, called Divina Pastoral.

Its caretaker is Alicia, and she gave us all the rules and regulations: no alcohol, lights out and quiet by 10 pm (all good), and no noise until 6:30 am. She said, "We love each other here, and it's easier to love each other when you're clean, so showers are compulsory." That's fine with us.

A view from the Divina Pastoral window:

What we didn't realize when Alicia said no noise before 6:30 was that she meant she would WAKE us at 6:30 with a song and some ukulele music. That was a new one.

We took the 10:30 am bus to Leon, along with several other peregrinos. We are all skipping the meseta, the dry and hot stretch of land that usually takes several days to cross. Guidebooks tend to say something like, well, there's beauty in EVERYthing, including the meseta, but don't forget to bring extra water.

This whole skip/don't skip/walk every single step/take a bus if you need to debate was nothing that ever occurred to me before this trip. I knew we would have to take a short cut at some point because we simply don't have enough time to do it all, but I didn't realize that walking every single step is such a point of pride, and that taking a taxi (because your feet are dying) or a bus is seen as a violation of the Camino rules.

Whatevs, I guess. No shame, all gain!

So now we're in Leon with our new walking partner. We've visited Leon's gorgeous cathedral and strolled around a bit -- Leon is also worth a visit -- and now we're settling in to get some sleep before heading off for another long walk tomorrow. I've decided to try shipping my backpack (also a violation of the Camino code) so we'll see how this works. Stay turned!

June 13: Happy birthday to Fran Walsh and Kristin Coode!

A couple of shots of Leon's cathedral:

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