Post by Wynette:
Our favorite thing is to walk a while and then have coffee and breakfast. That worked out for us today. We had a bag of muesli and boxed milk and fruit and walnuts and bowls and spoons. All we needed was a place to eat it. (We didn’t want to eat in our hotel room before we left, as we had done the day before.) So, we packed it all up (heavy!) and planned to stop at a bar somewhere and ask if we could have our breakfast at one of their tables.
We didn’t find a bar till around 10:00. Google maps said this (photo below) would be an open bar. But, as we walked up, it didn’t look like a bar and it didn’t look open:
We ordered two cafes con leche and then asked if we could eat our picnic breakfast at the table. She said “Claro que si.” We had permission!
We drank her delicious coffee and had our delicious breakfast as we watched people come in. It was also a little tienda selling a few groceries. Quite a number of people came and went, with lots of visiting going on. The woman who served us the coffee, etc., no doubt the owner, stayed busy. I’m sure the people who lived in the neighborhood appreciated having a bar and tienda close by.
The owner was not a smiley person and I wasn’t sure she was all that happy with us being there, although she hadn’t hesitated in giving us permission to eat our own food there. (Note: there wasn’t any breakfast food on offer there as far as we could see. And there were still some other empty tables.)
But … as we were finishing up eating and starting to clean up, she came to our table and asked, with a smile, if she could wash our dishes for us. I had planned to wipe the bowls out with a napkin and wash them at our hotel later. But we accepted her offer and handed her our plastic bowls and spoons and knife and cutting board.
It was a small act of kindness that made our day.
I see that the locals are all wearing jackets! Glad it is cool where you are, because most of Spain is having a record breaking heat wave for this time of year: it was 102 in Cordoba today, and 101 on Seville.
Yes, we’ve been hearing about the heat wave. It’s warmer here in Galicia than usual but still luckily not too bad. But there is some mid-80s weather coming up in a couple of days here that we are dreading. It turns out it’ll be two of our longest walking days as well. Even in the 60s when it’s sunny, it can be quite warm because it is so humid. We plan to get a very early start those days.