Month: April 2023

I keep posting about the bars in Spain because I like them so much. Each one is unique because there are no chains. My fear is that some private equity firm will start buying them up and cutting costs to increase profits.

But how does a small business like a bar buy all the things they need to operate? The traditional way to do this is middlemen, salesmen who sell, say, soft drinks. They go around to a lot of bars and take soft drink orders. And another one for coffee, and another one beer, etc. They know the people at each bar, and ask about their kids and carry new jokes from place to place.

The guy on the right in this photo is, we think, a middleman.

Here he is having a coffee and chatting. Later we saw him and the bar owner looking over some papers that looked like an order.

Such people used to be common in the US but I think they are disappearing, replaced by more efficient methods of keeping stock.

One of the things we like about Spain is that in some ways it is like the US was 50 years ago. Not in all ways for sure, in most ways Spain is a very modern country.

It is a matter of opinion whether the changes are good or bad and we can’t change them back in any case but we like to experience the old ways for a few weeks every year.

Post by Wynette:

I saw a deer bound past us yesterday on our backwoods adventure. (Charlie was too busy trying to figure out where our path was at that point.)

We really enjoy the farm animals.

Post by Wynette: You probably can’t see too well in this photo. Way down just past the sand are three separate bridges, side by side, crossing a ria: a car bridge, a train bridge, and a foot bridge. In 2019 we walked across the foot bridge to get to where we are now, O Barqueiro. Then again in 2019 we crossed the other way on the train bridge on the little Feve train on our return trip home. And two days ago we crossed in a bus (see posts about that earlier). So, now we’ve crossed all three. We saw them from way above this morning on our walk back from Bares where we spent last night.

Post by Wynette:

O Barqueiro is the tiny town where we are now. It’s the cutest little town and has not been touched by the awful urbinazación that we see so often. I.e., none of the tall, ugly, practically empty or not even completed apartment buildings.

O Barqueiro means the boatman.

Post by Wynette This little house and garden is just around the corner from our hotel in O Barqueiro. Someone has put a lot of love into this garden. This was only about half of it.

It is a common sight to see guys in their 50s and 60s taking their mothers around. We see them most often on the street supporting them with their arm. At a restaurant recently we were next to a guy with his mother. She looked about 85-90 and she had some health problems. He would come around the table and cut up her food for her.

Clearly this is an important value in Spanish culture and it is a good thing.

Every bar you go into has a few old guys sitting at the bar chatting. And by “old guys” I mean guys who are younger than we are but still qualify as old, almost certainly retired. Bars are a big social outlet and gathering place. And by “guys” I do mean that it is always guys, never women. I don’t know where the older women gather to socialize.

Post by Wynette:

Yesterday we saw a potato truck outside the restaurant of our hotel. A delivery truck just for potatoes!

If you have studied Spanish in the US, you probably learned the word for potatoes is papas. But here in Spain they are called patatas. Pronounced pah-TAH-tahs.

When you smile for a photo in Spain they tell you to say patata. Can you say that without smiling?

They seem to be important in the diet here, at least in northern Spain. It’s rare to get a second course dish that doesn’t have potatoes on the side. Usually French fries but sometimes cooked other ways. They always seem to be cooked perfectly. We try to remember to ask for a salad to be substituted for French fries and sometimes we remember. When we get French fries we try to control ourselves. And we both agree ketchup would be nice. But they don’t serve them with ketchup.

We’ve mentioned the famous tortilla de patatas that is served in pretty much every Spanish bar. It’s eggs, potatoes, and onions. A nice hearty snack and actually makes a great sandwich filling. I’ve become, after many trips to Spain, quite fond of them. Charlie is not a fan. Our friend Holly, who has been here on Camino, is a great fan.

Post by Wynette:

If you’ve read any of the menu board photos that we’ve posted, you probably see lots of unrecognizable food. Even after many trips to Spain, we still have to look up most items. We discovered a nice trick at some point on a past trip: look up things in Google Images. It’s good to translate as well but often that doesn’t help much. For example, today we had Merluza a la Gallega. Merluza translates to Hake. But looking up Merluza a la Gallega on Google and then clicking on Images (just under the search bar) brings up photos and you get a pretty good idea of what you will be getting.

Another hint: The other day a menu had lorios and when I translated it got lilies (the flower). So I changed it to lorios comer (“comer” means “to eat”) and searched on Google Images and found it was little fish of some kind. I’d have to do more research to know exactly what kind of fish but at that point I decided I wasn’t interested.

We did order the Merluza today. When the server asked us later if we liked it and we said we did she said it was “tipica”. People mention that a lot about their food. It means “typical” and it’s their way of saying they are very proud of their local food. “A la Gallega” means, essentially, “from Galicia” or “of Galicia”.

Today we walked from our hotel in O Barqueiro to Bares, a little town up north near a lighthouse that is the northernmost spot in Spain. On a normal Camino all you need to do is follow the yellow arrows which mark the path every 100 yards or so. It is easy. For walks like the one today which is not on the Camino or on the Ruta, we use an app called Wikiloc which records walks taken by lots of people all over the world. We found several paths we could take and chose one that did not have too much up and down.

By “path” we mean a GPX track that someone records using the GPS on their phone. Wikiloc loads the track and you see it on the map along with your current location. You just follow the track. If you get off the track Wikiloc beeps at you. It is pretty much impossible to get lost.

O Barqueiro is build on a hill so the first thing we did was climb up and up and up to the top of the town,

We started on a road and is was easy walking. This is a cinch. The track said it was only four and a half miles to Bares. We continued along the road through a few forks.

Oops, Wikiloc is beeping at us. I check the app and a red banner says “you are leaving the trail”. We backtrack and realize we should have taken an overgrown logging road that was hard to see.

Beep, beep. You’re off the trail again. This is the turn we missed. Take the right one. It hardly looks like a trail at all.

Then it got even worse. We were walking through nettles and it became impassable. We turned back but after 30 yards we realized we were about ten feet off the trail. Not far enough to get buzzed by Wikiloc and within GPS variability. The right trail was not much better but we made it to a forest road that was easier to walk.