Month: April 2023

Benches and things

Kind of low and in the weeds
These students have the right idea, just stand on them.
More in my series of of overgrown benches
Not sure what dictators they are worried about
A Camino bench
The town of Fene has a rainbow theme, here, on trash cans, maybe other places.
They made a Camino arrow out of Camino shells
Wynette filling her water bottle at a Camino fountain decorated with a Camino shell

An amazing garden

We were walking along in a small town near Fene and saw this flowering shrub of a beautiful orangey color. We stopped to take a photo and talked to the woman standing outside the fence working on the hedge. We asked her what it was. She wasn’t sure but then her husband came and she told him we had a question. He couldn’t remember but said that we should identify it with a phone app. Wynette started taking a photo through the gate and he said, come on inside the garden and get close, so we did.

Our first view of the garden, side fence
Standing at the front gate
The shrub that drew us in
A closeup for Google Lens to use for identification
More of the garden
Wynette and the master gardener each on their flower identification apps, trying to identify the blue flower
It turns out that “bird of paradise” is the same in Spanish, but in Spanish of course
He was a sweet, cheerful, friendly man. He told us keeping a garden like that is a lot of work. His wife said the same thing. And we believed them.
The variety was amazing

Spanish plumbing

We have stayed in 15 places already and I have noticed several things about the bathrooms. The toilets…

…all seem to be square now. I don’t keep up with bathroom trends in the US, maybe they are all square there also.

The showers: in higher-end places (which for us is the €65 to €80 range) all have rainfall showers above paired with a handheld sprayer which can also be used as a shower head. The control on the left chooses which head and the water volume and the control on the right sets the temperature.

The lower-end places (for us, an incredible €30 last night to €55) just have the spray/shower head.

Liquid soap is in and tiny little soap bars are out. Less than half the places have soap bars. The modern casa rural in Teixido had three liquid dispensers in the shower: shampoo was a blue liquid, body wash was a yellow, and conditioner was white.

Most places have separate shampoo and body wash but who really believes they are different except for the dye? One place had an honest, single shampoo and body wash.

Only one place so far has had a fan in the bathroom. Strange because it is mucho humido here and a fan would help.

Teixido 8: percebes

Percebes

Percebes are a shellfish that is common in this part of Galicia. Several guidebooks mentioned that you should try them. But they grow on rock faces in the tidal zone and are difficult to harvest and hence expensive. I saw them on the menu and decided to try them. The server had to give us a lesson in how to eat them. Here is a video of my version of what she taught us: https://photos.app.goo.gl/U2pv1zfLYSyRaBKv8

Teixido 7: the pilgrimage

The santuario is the end of a 30 mile pilgrimage starting in or around Ferrol.

This is a post for the pilgrimage. We saw this today along the Camino Ingles; they share a route for a short way. This was right next to a Camino kilometer post.
This is NOT a mushroom. We walked a little way along the pilgrimage. Apparently some people ride rather than walk. I’m not sure if San Andre would look favorably on this.

Teixido 6: the casa rural

When we were planning our trip in 2019 we wanted to stay in Texeido but there was no place within 8-10 miles of it. Since then someone built a very nice, modern casa rural a few hundred feet and around the bend from the town, by the tour bus parking lot.

We had the place to ourselves until about five and then two French couples, one with a child, arrived. Here we are all leaving the next day (this morning).

The place was very modern. We liked it a lot. One modern thing was they had radiant heat in the floors. I have always wanted to have radiant heat but it is expensive to retrofit. Turned out it was kind of an issue when we arrived (quite early 10 am). The owner just gave us a entry code and we had the place to ourselves. The heat was set to 19C and we turned it up to 22C but nothing happened for the next hour. I looked around and saw there were no air vents and realized it must be radiant heat. Radiant heat moves slowly, it took 10 hours for the heat to read 22C. And it was too warm overnight. So radiant heat is great but maybe not the best for a hotel.

The bathroom in the dark. Then I tapped the glowing circle on the mirror.
Our room

Teixido 4: the town

There is a tiny town around the Sanctuario, maybe 10 buildings. I don’t suppose more than 10-20 people live there. The buildings all (well almost all) have the same whitewashed stone walls. There are four places to eat and 3-4 souvenir shops. We bought a refrigerator magnet.

We ate here.
Walking down from the church. Ahead of Wynette is the bread delivery van which supplies all the eating places.

We pretty much had the place to ourselves. There was only one other couple walking around. Until after lunch, then…

Uh oh, a tour bus arrived. Suddenly the place has 30-49 people walking around. Fortunately we were walking back to our Casa rural by then.
The town seems to have its own cookie, with a hole in it. Here are some that were delivered to a bar we had coffee at. There were vendors selling them on the street.