Rest Day

Since the weather has been so miserable, we are a little behind on our schedule, so decided to take a rest day.  We figured out the bus schedule and bussed ahead to Logrono today.  This is a fairly big city.  We found the municipal alburgue, which is decent but crowded   I guess I haven't explained that since the Camino has been a pilgrimage route since the Middle Ages, each town along the way has accommodations for pilgrims called alburgues.  Some are run by the town, municipals- some by parishes or convents or some private.  They are generally inexpensive 6-10 euro and mostly dorm setting.  Some are rooms with 4 bunks  and a couple we stayed were one room of 20-25 people.  Earplugs are a must!! I also brought a sleep mask since some early birds like to leave before sunrise and pack their bags with a headlamp bobbing about which is very annoying !   Everywhere has lights out at 10pm and lights on at 6am. Most everywhere you must leave by 8 or 9 am.  You can only stay if you are sick or must move to a private.    Last night we paid 2 extra euro for a private room.  Tonight the sleeping room has about 30 people and the beds are quite close together.  Not the best but it has a nice kitchen with pans and dishes so instead of eating out tonight we walked around and
bought some food to cook here. We will have a supper of kind of an omelet/ hash--eggs, some beef, potatoes, onion, peppers and tomato.  The shopping is hard to get used to!  First, shops open later, after we need to get moving in the morning and then when we get to a stop in the afternoon it is siesta when everything closes again until after 6.  Also, shops only sell one or two types of items, unless you can find a super mercado ( market) in a bigger town.  Farmacia ( pharmacy s only have medicine-- not batteries, razors, snacks, shampoo, etc  or anything like a Walgreens at home. The fruit/ veg market only has fruit and veg--nothing else.   And you are not allowed to touch the fruit- only point to what you want and they will select for you.   So, you have to go to many shops to get only a few items!  We never did find a bakery today, but stopped for a snack and they put some bread on the table so I wrapped it up for dinner : ).  Many restaurants have a pilgrims menu- dinner of 3 courses, sometimes salad or soup, meat or fish and dessert.  These are hit or miss as far as quality so that is why we decided to cook our own meal tonight. Not every place has had a stocked kitchen.  People leave their extras since no one wants to carry any extra weight!  So there are some spices left here and some olive oil, so hopefully dinner will be good!!  We are already tired of the standard ham/
 cheese bocadillos ( sandwiches) that are offered everywhere.  And we made sure to learn the word for  octopus,  pulpo, which is a local favorite here, so that we can avoid that!!!!

Update: dinner was good and I was going to take a picture if it, but just as we were getting ready to eat a harmonica band came to entertain the pilgrims!  I took a little video clip but can't attach it right now   So a nice end to the day !