Month: September 2014

Wynette. We are in Cirueña where we’ll stay the night. We walked about 10 miles today. Around 2:30 we arrived at our B&B , Casa Victoria. After checking in with a nice man we walked next door to Bar Jacobeo for lunch, pictured above. (The only place for lunch in this tiny town. Not even a grocery store.) We thought we’d just ask for fried eggs and toast. But that caused quite a stir. They definitely could not make us toast. Our only option was a bocadilla or the pilgrim’s menu. So we had the menu. Fine, because we were hungry. We placed our order and sat down. Our waiter (man in black shirt standing and watching TV above) brought our water and napkins. He’d placed the napkins at our right hand. After he left I unconsciously moved mine to my left the way we do it in the States. He returned with the silverware and saw I’d moved my napkin and he made me move it back over to the right. He seemed genuinely upset I’d moved my napkin. Soon he brought the first course. Charlie had ordered garbanzo beans and I had ordered the soup. What we got was probably the best pilgrim’s meal we’ve had so far. The garbanzos came with two kinds of sausage and a pork rib. The soup was cod with potatoes and vegetables. Everything perfectly cooked and flavored. We decided that in the kitchen of this unassuming bar was someone’s grandmother. When the waiter brought us the second course, we asked “Who is la cocinera (the cook)?” He smiled for the first time and pointed to a woman sitting at the end of the bar. She was probably around 30, not grandmotherly at all. She must have heard us ask because she waved and smiled at us. Our second courses (beef and chicken) were delicious, too.

(Everyone in the bar was watching a big bike race on the TV.)

First course with silverware on the right :

We stayed in a very nice albergue in Najera. We had a private room but everyone got a bed with sheets and towels. This cabinet was on one side of the room. I don’t think we have ever had add much shelf space in a hotel room.

You can never have too many flat surfaces to put things on.

Xerox PARC did a study on how people organized their offices and found that most people used a system of piles. So they invented a “pile cabinet” basically like the cabinet in our room.

Since our devices have many functions we use them a lot in our room. So they need recharging. So we need to recharge them while we are using them. Outlets are not always in convenient places. The cables we brought are a bit short. Problem. I should have thought of this before we left and got longer ones.

Enter the metric system. USB to micro USB cables are a worldwide standard but their length is not. The replacement cable we got is about a foot longer than the one we brought. Problem solved. We got two.

I never thought before how the measurement system might affect things like typical cable lengths.

Another metric system thought. We have kilometers, kilograms and kilobytes and megabytes but you never hear about megameters or megagrams. They would be useful. The Camino is about 1.6 megameters. And almost all of us weight less than a tenth of a megagram, sounds pretty light to me.

And astronomers could use giga, peta, etc and get rid of these awkward units like A.U. and the easily misunderstood light year.

Charlie. We each have a smart phone which is our camera, e-reader, audio player, Internet access, texting device and guide books. Oh yeah, they also make phone calls. We got a Spanish SIM card with unlimited texts, 100 minutes and 1.6 (in Europe 1,6) GB. I have a 5.5″ LG G3 and Wynette has a 4.7 Nexus 4. Wynette also has an actual iPod.

Talk about a single point of failure.   My G3 started rebooting by itself a few times in one day, apparently a common problem with them. Luckily it seems to have healed itself for now since I am far away from t-mobile repairs.

Apart from that we are happy with the devices. They are light. I like the 5.5″ screen in the 5.0″ body thanks to thin bezels.

Little things can cause problems. We charge the devices with a Spain-to-US adapter, a USB charger and a USB to micro USB cable. One charger setup was very slow. By swapping parts I narrowed it down to a weak cable. In Logrono we got a new cable and now all is speedy.

Charlie. This was in the sitting room of our hotel in Ventosa. It is bad enough when you have to move useless pillows to sit on a couch. How would you ever sit in one of these chairs?

Wynette. We walked about 7 miles today. We set out knowing there would be no town or bar to stop for a rest, coffee, or bathroom. So, I was happy to see the food cart this friendly man had set up about half way. He had a fresh orange juice machine and we each ordered a glass. He started a loud generator to provide electricity to power the machine. The juice was delicious. He kept telling us to drink up because he wanted to refill our glasses, no extra charge. We sat at one of his little tables and enjoyed a short rest. As we left I asked if I could take his picture. He happily smiled for me.

Charlie. We stayed at a great hotel in Ventosa. It opened in 2012 after being completely rebuilt from the ground up. But because it was an historic building they had to reproduce it exactly. Seems funny in a way. It isn’t old but it has to look like a building that was old but no longer exists.

We don’t know if this feature was because of this requirement but this well was unlike anything I’ve seen before.

We were sitting at the table worrying that we would drop something into the well.

Charlie. Mathematics is more popular than English.

Charlie. Between two modern buildings.

Charlie. This is a supermarket we’ll be going to later. Only two hours off for siesta. The tradition may be fading.