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I use the photo identification app built into my phone. Usually it works fine, although not as well as Google Lens. For example, I took this photo yesterday:

and it said “Asian knotweed”. Great. Then we saw this cow with unusual markings that we had never seen before and we wondered what breed it might be.

and it said — it’s a “cow”. But wait, there’s more! It also noted that it is a “large, domesticated, cloven-hooved herbivore”. Thanks Apple, I guess that settles that!

No short items today. We walked 7.5 miles, up 950 feet and down 830 feet, actual altitude ranged from 46 to 466. In an early blog, 2013, I noted that the pleasant phrase “rolling hills” is actually not that much fun to walk. Some were quite steep.

But today was a very nice walk. The whole way we were walking through rolling hills of green pastures dotted with farm houses. And lots of cows today. They say that walking in nature makes people happy and that was the case today. We both felt at home and in harmony with the environment. It was a good feeling. We always feel energetic and invigorated at the beginning of the walking day. That is an advantage of our short days, we get the good part at the beginning and by the time we are getting tired we are just about there.

It is a bit ironic really since these landscapes are not the least bit in their natural state. They are farms. But still, it feels so good to walk through them.

We saw a few pilgrims today. We chatted with two women from Ireland who were resting on a bench as we passed. They had started the Norte in 2017, got delayed by the pandemic and are now finishing it. They are slow walkers also, although not as slow as we are, who is? But they were saying they liked to go slow and enjoy it.

We are staying at a cute little pension in Oreña, a tiny town, looks like fewer than 100 people. The pension has only six rooms. The owner said that starting soon and through September she is full every day and she could rent every room six times over every night. This is quite a popular vacation area. As it gets hot the Spanish people like to come to the north coast where it is cooler. One reason we like to go in April is that you can actually find places to stay. It can be a bit cold though. We just discovered that our radiator is actually hot. I think this is the first one on this trip that was.

There are no services here so, on the way, we stopped at a supermarket and picked up food for a picnic lunch, a WynChar menu del dia: olives, salmon, two kinds of very good bread, crab salad, a packaged Caesar salad, a chicken empanada, strawberries and some little dessert cups. The pension owner brought us two glasses of water. It was delightful. We had as much fun picking things out at a “Lupa” supermarket as anything we did today. We carried out packs in the grocery cart. Fortunately we are easy to please. 😉

Note: I typed the old-fashioned happy face, ;-), there and it converted it into a emoji, because if I use an actual emoji in one of these posts it fails. It took me a while to figure that out because WordPress just said it couldn’t save and it didn’t say why.

I snapped the above photo this morning as we were walking from our hotel to the train station. Note that it’s called a “cafe” and not a “bar”. But it is pretty much identical, I think. There is still plenty of liquor behind the counter.

Above is the cafe/bar where we hung out yesterday afternoon in Santander. Again, it’s called a “cafe” on the outside but note the inside. Pretty much a typical bar.

Of course we go to Spanish bars for the coffee and sometimes for a snack or even a meal. And they are open family places. You often see families with children. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a Spanish person drunk. I think it’s really frowned on to be drunk in public here. Of course, wine is served with every meal and included at no extra charge in the menus del dia.

It seemed like we saw a lot more bars in Santander that were called “cafes”. I wonder if that is a trend all over Spain?

We are fond of the cafe con leche in Spain. In Italy having coffee with milk after breakfast marks you as a child or a tourist. In Spain there is some of that but it is not as strong.

In Basque Country you just order a cafe con leche and that’s that. As soon as we got into Cantabria they started asking if we wanted a regular or a grande. We noticed that on other Caminos as well, part-way through they started asking.

We have started a ritual where we go out around four of five and settle into a bar, grab a table and do our daily blogging. That is too late for coffee for us so we get decafs. Every time the decafs have been very good, as good as any of the regular coffees we have gotten. Of course, we are coffee heretics anyway what with the milk we use, so don’t listen to us.

Also, once we got into Cantabria, we started getting cafes in glasses instead of cups. In one place only the grandes were in glasses. This works unless the coffee is very hot. We like these regional differences.

Another thing we like is that every bar is unique, there do not seem to be any chains. No doubt private capital will swoop in soon and ruin that.

Train stops missed: 1
Kind Spanish women who tried to help the rookies but was a few seconds too late: 1
Miles: 7.1
Rain: a little but we were already inside
Early morning walks through Santander: 1
Hot and cold pipelines wondered about: 1

As careful readers of this blog know, we are “short-haul” pilgrims who like to walk 7-9 miles a day rather than the 15-20 miles a day that the young whippersnappers like to do. This means we have to plan more to make sure we have enough stops. One solution is to plan a longer leg but take a taxi the first few miles to cut the daily walk down the WynChar size. We did this for today’s walk.

Since we like trains better than taxis we found the perfect train leaving at 7:50. We walked the half mile to the train station around 7:15, right at sunrise. The streets were mostly empty. First we went into the wrong train station, the one for longer distance trains. The local trains were next door. These are really more like metros and we got tickets from a machine and tapped our tickets to get through the turnstiles.

The train left at exactly 7:50 and arrived at the stop exactly at the scheduled 8:15. The train stopped and we were at the door ready to alight. But the door didn’t open. Turns out they only open when you push the button, which we didn’t find in time. A kindly Spanish woman saw these naive innocents stand at the door and rushed over to push the green button but was a few seconds late. The yellow blinking light indicated the train was leaving WITH us.

So, on to the next station, 2-3 miles down the line, where we got off. What to do? We were only 5 miles from our hotel, short even for us. We caught the Camino and decided to walk a mile in reverse and then back. Kind of a weird complete-ism for short-haul pilgrims but we were rattled and didn’t think everything through.

We felt kind of funny walking the “wrong” way. The Spanish people are always being helpful if we miss a turn or are off the Camino. Sometimes they are right and sometimes we have to explain that we are going to a bar or a hotel. Today was no exception. We were walking along and two guys in hi-viz jackets told us we were going the wrong way. Wynette told them we were doing it on purpose and they asked why. She just said it was a long story. (Wynette added: they had the nicest smiles and were laughing with us about us going backwards.) Afterwards we thought we might have explained that we missed a train stop but that really doesn’t explain it without more details.

This is kind of like when a Spanish person stops to chat, which happens often, and asks if we are going to Santiago. We’re not, but we always say yes, it’s easier than a long explanation about our half-caminos.

So, up a mile and back, we still got to the hotel at 11:45 but the room was ready even though check-in time was hours later. Rest, then lunch at the hotel which is also a slightly upscale restaurant. Now we’re down in the bar, a happening place.

On our extra back and forth walk, the path had a pipeline, actually two, beside it. We felt it, not sure why we decided to feel it, and it was hot. The other one was cold. A mystery. We have no idea what was in the pipes. Would like to know.

It’s cold and windy and rainy-ish outside, so we were glad our hotel was so all-purpose today. Nice restaurant, nice bar, nice room. Hotel Cueli in Viveda. Nothing much to explore in Viveda anyway. So, once we stepped through the hotel door, we had no plans to step out until tomorrow morning.

We haven’t posted a menu lately so thought I’d post about that. Our hotel had a nice menu del dia. (We decided not to try the €66 tasting menu.)

The paella was tasty. The broccoli was cooked more than we liked but didn’t taste too bad and we felt virtuous getting some vegetables. We liked the grilled fish (ojito). We were disappointed with the chicken with Roquefort sauce. Carrot cake was yummy. Charlie liked his dessert: cheese with quince jelly.

We are in the large bar of our hotel (Hotel Cueli) in Viveda. I just counted. There are 33 men in here. I’m the only woman. Most of the men are at tables of 4 or 5 playing some kind of card game. This is clearly a local hang out for the jubilantes (retired guys). It’s neat.

After my dad retired, he liked to go down to the McDonalds in Hobbs and meet up with his friends. And my granddad used to go down to the service station in Dora, NM, and play dominoes with his friends.

In the afternoons, Charlie and I’ve enjoyed lately finding a local bar in whatever town we are in and ordering a decaf and blogging, answering email, planning next stage, etc. It’s a nice way to be a part of things.

We’ve almost always found the laundries in Spain to be spotlessly clean and well-appointed with good baskets, tables, coin-exchange machines. We did the laundry a few days ago in Portugalete and to our surprise it was really dirty and no coin machine. Even stuff on the floor you could trip over. We didn’t want walk to a further one in the rain so we went ahead and used the creepy one.

Today, the laundry here in Santander was back to the good standards. As soon as we took our clothes out of the dryer, the properietor came out and started cleaning the outside and inside of the dryer. Later I noticed a sign that said: “The machines are disinfected after each wash.” (Top right sign below.) I imagine that is something left over from covid.

Now for the “coffee” part of the story. There was a bar next door. After we put the clothes in the dryer, we ran over and ordered two cafés con leche. We had planned to drink them quickly at the bar but I didn’t feel comfortable leaving the clothes for long so asked the bar tender if we could take the cups next door and she gave me a big smile and said “claro que sí” (“of course!”). And, of course, we hadn’t paid for them yet — you do that when you are done with the coffee.

Astute readers may have noticed the sign at the bottom right of the top photo that one might interpret as “no food or drink” but (1) we hadn’t noticed that sign till we’d already brought in the coffee and (2) Charlie, the sign expert, said that it meant “no hamburgers and coke.”

They used to say about the Camino that “cash is king” because few places took tarjetas. But the pandemic and technology changed that. Touchless was in. We had about €280 in cash from our last trip and now, after two weeks, that is getting low. The exchange rate, which becomes relevant later, in the rant part, is about $1.07 per euro.

We pay for just about everything with Apple Pay. It is very convenient and we have an easy way to look at a record of everything we spend. Our pizza dinner was one of the few meals that required cash.

Anyway, time to get more cash. We chose a bank ATM that doesn’t charge a fee. After you ask for an amount, in our case €300, they ask if you want them to convert it or have your home bank do it. I have blogged about this before also, always have your bank do it. They offered a rate of 0.8455 euros per dollar. Actually it has four more decimal places, presumably to give you some feeling of exactitude. A quick calculation revealed how bad this was. They wanted $354 for €300. I tapped the button for no conversion. Then they did something I had not seen before. They asked again, saying are you sure you don’t want us to convert it for you. You can count on our rate but you don’t know what kind of rate you bank might give you. I declined again. We got the cash and the email from the bank in about three seconds. They charged us $320 for €300, a little better than the rate of $1.07 that google said of the going rate. That was the highest markup I have seen on any cash machine.