Day: March 11, 2022

We have already seen dozens of storks on our walk. I guess this is the right time of year and the right place for them. They are still building their nests. We saw one bringing a stick for the nest and placing it. They will be laying eggs soon. One source said you start seeing the young ones in mid May. We see them over the fields in the morning. I suppose they are finding food there and fattening themselves so they can take care of the young ones. We will add some of our photos and videos after this.

Well, I keep going on and on about the food. I hope I’m not being too boring. This post is mainly about what a great bargain it is. I don’t think I’m exaggerating too much to say it is about half the cost of food in the US, at least in the smaller cities and towns. This morning, here in Astorga, we found a bar/cafe/restaurant for breakfast that had the best coffee we’ve had so far. It was more expensive than usual: 1.30 euros. (1 euro right now $1.10.) So that makes the coffee roughly $1.50. In the states a coffee this good would be about $4.00, I think. This place actually advertised that they served “English breakfast” (as well as the typical coffee and a roll European breakfast) so we ordered that. We weren’t sure what it would include. Turned out to be two fried eggs, LOTS of bacon and sausage, bread, a generous glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice, and a coffee, all for 4.90 euros. Keep in mind any price I quote any time includes tax and tip. (Well, they don’t expect to the tipped here in Spain. Sometimes people leave a little extra change if they get some extra change after paying.)

This morning, when Charlie paid for our English breakfasts, he left a 2 euro tip just because it seemed so ridiculously inexpensive. He walked away and I saw the server look at the money he left on the counter and point it out to the other server/cook. They both looked over in our direction. I felt like we had done something wrong based on how they looked at us. I guess people might think that we assume they are needy. Waiters and waitresses in Spain get paid better than they do in the US and don’t depend on tips.

Yesterday we stopped at a bar/cafe and had fried eggs, toast, coffee and they also threw in some Spanish tortilla (omelette) and more bread and the total cost for BOTH of us was 7 euros. I don’t understand how they can make any money at these prices.

It turns out Astorga is a big chocolate town. Historically the cacao beans arrived in ports in Galicia and were transported over the mountains by people from this area and they decided to just do the processing in Astorga rather than sending the raw beans to Madrid. We went to the Chocolate Museum this morning. It was a small pleasant place in a beautiful old building. We saw a video of one guy going through the whole process of roasting the beans, liquifying them with a roller and adding sugar, and molding them into chocolate squares. Then we saw the whole process again with the machines they used in the 19th century to do the same thing. Now there are, of course, much more automated machines. Astorga used to have over 20 chocolate makers, now they have five. Local chocolate is sold all over town. We got some at the chocolate museum.

There must be some regulation about servers masking because everyone in a hotel or shop has a mask even in little towns. I assume from that that the rule is enforced with some significant penalties. I would say 80-90 percent of the customers coming in also have masks but as soon as their coffee or food comes the masks come off and stay off for the whole meal. Is this covid theater? Yes, of course it is, but I think it shows some solidarity with the wait staff and willingness to do what is necessary. Spain is over 80% vaccinationed.

We are in full trust-the-vaccine mode and can’t wait for some food to come so we can take off our masks.

We are in Astorga today and I would guess that 75% of the people walking outside are masked which surprises me. We are not wearing masks outside.

Touchless got much more popular during the pandemic. We have paid for almost everything, like coffee this morning, with Apple Pay and have used much less cash than we normally do on a camino. Almost all vendors have a device that accepts smartphone payments and touchless chip credit cards.

We are loving the Spanish “homemade” food. It’s hard not to eat too much of it and we end up eating a lot of meat and bread. Some great salads and some vegetables, too, but not as many veges as we’d like. We are staying an extra day in Astorga, a vibrant city on the Camino. We’d bought fruit, nuts, oats for a muesli breakfast tomorrow and there was way too much so we decided to have it for lunch today as well, despite all the good restaurants here in Astorga. We grabbed a pre-packaged salad and a tomato to add to the lunch. How’s that for a menu? Muesli and salad and fruit!

These strawberries are amazing. They were only 1.49 euros for 500 kilos (more than a pound) and are huge and very sweet. They come from the south of Spain.

We are in Astorga today at the Hotel Gaudi, across the street from the Bishop’s Palace, one of three Gaudi buildings outside of Barcelona. It appears the bishop got booted because walking in I saw a sign for the Gaudi Palace.

We toured it the last time we were here and might go again tomorrow.

I wanted to say a few more things about Gaudi after seeing the museum in Leon. I had thought of Gaudi mainly as an artist who built building modeled on organic forms, but he was a gifted architect as well. Leon is colder than Barcelona and has problematic soil and lots of rain. He designed a new kind of foundation method for the Leon building, different from what was done before in Leon. The local architects didn’t think it would work and spread tales about how dangerous the building would be. But it did work and was also used in a later Gaudi building in Barcelona. He designed a ventilation system for the building to make it comfortable in summer and winter. He slanted the roof so the snow would fall off and other parts of the building so the snow would stay and give the building a frosted winter palace look. He designed drainage systems so the rain would not run down the side of the building including failsafes if they got blocked. He also designed furniture for the building, Quite the all-around guy.