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 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.
From the front
We toured it the last time we were here and might go again tomorrow.
From the wall
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.
Wynette has been amazing this trip with her Spanish. She will be the first to tell you how bad it is and how much she misses, especially when people talk fast, which they usually do. That is all true and she would not qualify as fluent but she calls and makes reservations and we have a place to stay. She has lengthy conversations with people and she learns lots of things about their lives. And sometimes we get hugs at the end, how great is that?
This all is making me think I need to spend at least some time learning some Spanish. I’ll never match Wynette who has been working on it for years but I can do a little.
Selfie with the owner of hostel where we stayed last night, Albergue Hostel Casa de los Hidalgos (highly recommended)
Reading the previous post I started wondering why we went early and thought about it. Since Wynette speaks pretty good Spanish she is able to talk to local people who only speak Spanish, which is most of them. We are usually the only people staying in the places we stay so we get the full attention of the people running the place. Wynette talked about her long conversations with Anabel in Villar de Mazarife. Anabel gave us a big hug at the end and Benedito gave us a manly handshake (you know how we guys are). This morning at breakfast she had a long friendly conversation with our hospitalier (?) ending with photos all around. People in restaurants have plenty of time to chat and ask us about our walk and tell us about their lives.
Sometimes we get cold and some places are closed but I think it is worth it.
As Wynette said we came early to avoid later crowds. We read a forum about all things Camino and everyone on the forum seems quite anxious to walk after a two-year hiatus. I expect there will be a huge number of pilgrims this year with the Holy Year and the post-covid surge. Hard to believe since now there are hardly any Pilgrims and many places are closed.
It is not like the Camino was free from crowds before the pandemic. The forum is filled with tales of people getting up at 5 am, walking some distance in the dark, and racing along in order to get a bed at the albergue for the night. We always thought this was sad. People did not stop and look at things. In a way this made sense because, for most pilgrims, the Camino is about doing the walking and socializing with other pilgrims.
Of course, the Camino will not be the only busy place this summer. I expect all the tourist sights will be packed and most are booked up for the entire summer.
Yellow arrows lead the way. This was our first one on this Camino.
On our first Camino (in 2013!) we flew into Madrid, took a long bus ride to Pamplona, and finally a 45 minute bus ride to Roncesvalles, and stayed the night. The next three days we walked back to Pamplona, the start of the 45 minute bus ride. This gave me pause at the time and started me thinking about why people walk the Camino.
Our bus ride and walk back are completely normal for the Camino and almost all pilgrims do similar things, but if we then had taken the bus from Pamplona to Logrono, the next large city on the Camino, it would have been completely contrary to the spirit of the Camino and virtually no pilgrims would do that. Why is the direction so important? I think this is fairly obvious if you go through the reasons for walking the Camino in a previous post. Still, it makes you think.
Later in the same Camino we got to a town and called up a hotel about ten miles off the Camino. They sent a car to pick us up and take us there, we spent the night, and the next morning they gave us a ride back the exact spot we had been picked up. They provided this service to attract pilgrim business. Other than staying in a hotel, which has somewhat less pilgrim status than staying in an albergue, this was perfectly acceptable pilgrim behavior.
Yesterday we walked from Bercianos towards Mansilla de las Mulas for about seven miles, called a taxi to come and take us to Mansilla, stayed the night in a lovely hotel, and in the morning called a taxi to take us back to where we were picked up and walked the rest of the way into Mansilla, where we are staying tonight in the same lovely hotel.
From the outside this is kind of a crazy thing to do but I’m sure you see that it completely within the spirit of walking the Camino. Apart from the slight issue of staying in a hotel and spending the taxi money (32 euros) no one would fault us for doing this, and, in fact, this is common pilgrim behavior and recommended in Camino guidebooks as a way to handle long sections without services that many people cannot walk.
Despite this “taxi up and back” being “Camino community approved” doing it was somewhat unsatisfying. There is a pleasure in just walking the normal path that seemed somehow missing. It wasn’t that there is something wrong with it but I’m not sure it is the best way to get the Camino experience we want. We might do it again if we need to but we will try to avoid it.
Thinking about these issues was fun for me and a fun thing to do while walking. So there is another reason for walking the Camino, it encourages us to think about things that you would not have thought about if you had stayed home.
Full disclosure: Okay, we are wimpy walkers and only taxied back six miles instead of the nine to get to where we were picked up. So sue me.
The most popular route of the Camino de Santiago is a 500 mile east to west walk across Northern Spain ending at Santiago de Compostela. It’s called the Camino Frances because it starts in France. Why would someone do this? Let’s see.
Religious reasons: The Camino follows a pilgrimage path used extensively in the middle ages and even before that. It was an official Catholic pilgrimage. There is complicated theology involving indulgences associated with it but basically people take a pilgrimage as an act of faith similar to giving something up for Lent.
Spiritual reasons: someone might perform a difficult task as an act of faith in themselves, to show that they can do it, to accomplish something significant, to spend some special time thinking things through.
Social reasons: the Camino is a unique social environment: hundreds of thousands of people walking the same path, staying in albergues (dormitories), making friends, having communal dinners, sharing a goal.
Tourist reasons: Spain varies widely in culture and geography. The Camino takes you through a lot of beautiful country and several cultural regions (starting in Basque country for example).
Hiking reasons: walking is a great way to get the feel of a region. The Camino is not like, say, the Appalachian Trail, that requires serious hiking skills and that you bring food, water, and camping equipment. You stay at albergues, you have coffee at local bars, you eat “pilgrims menus” at local restaurants, or cook communally at the albergue.
Most pilgrims have a mix of these reasons and others besides, many pilgrims walk after a death of someone close, a serious medical diagnosis, a divorce, etc as a way of working things through.
