Day: April 19, 2025

• Another rest day. We did pack up our packs and walk the half mile from last night’s hotel to tonight’s hotel. They were not the same because of busy hotels for Semana Santa.
• Yesterday we ate breakfast at a nice little cafe very close to our hotel, our usual fried eggs and toast. Three video screens playing videos from what appeared to be the late 1980s, on some MTV channel. This surprised me since I thought MTV had stopped playing videos. This seemed to be the video equivalent of a Spotify playlist. We enjoyed trying to identify the songs without looking at Shazam on our phones.
• This morning we went back to the same place (same video play) and he recognized us and remembered our order. When I got up to pay he suddenly remembered something and got my glasses off a high shelf. I had left them but didn’t realize it. I’m not used to wearing glasses, only recently needing them, and don’t usually wear them.
• Speaking of playlists, we were in a bar for lunch a few days ago and they were playing all rockabilly, my favorite genre. I think I can say without fear of contradiction that rockabilly is the greatest music ever made. Besides the classics they had some deep rockabilly cuts that even I had never heard. Shazam heard: Party Doll by Buddy Knox, Let’s have a party by Wanda Jackson, Summertime blues bu Eddie Cochran, Bluejean bop by Gene Vincent, Woo Hoo by the 5.6.7.8’s (!), Good golly miss molly by Little Richard, Ubangi stomp by Warren Smith, Rebel rouser by Duane Eddie.
• We had a great lunch at Micazo Ramen: a ramen bowl and an udon bowl. Afterwards the waiter offered us, on the house, a sample of a Japanese plum liqueur called umeshu. He claimed the recipe was 3700 years old. It was good but we didn’t buy a bottle. It wasn’t that good and I’m not lugging a bottle of booze in my backpack.
• Now we are sitting in a lovely common room with big windows looking out on the square. I love to watch the rain and wind while sitting inside in a warm room.
• The rain patterns here are so different from what I am used to. You’ll get a light drizzle and then clear up and you get some sun, then it clouds over and you get a heavy rain, then a light rain, etc, etc, etc. In New Mexico, if it rains for 15 minutes straight it is quite and event.
• Miles walked per Wynette’s watch: 5.76
• Flights of stairs climbed (equivalent): 9, mostly in our pension

As Charlie wrote in his diary last night, we taxied to Pontevedra yesterday. I’ve had a bit of a sore throat/congestion. It isn’t bad at all and luckily hasn’t affected my energy much. But it was hard to face a long walk in the rain yesterday.

Pontevedra is such a pretty town. Tonight we are staying in the cutest little pension. It’s been very restful. We checked in here at noon today. We found a great bar on the corner. (It was warm, they actually closed the door!) We found a Japanese noodle restaurant nearby and had a terrific lunch there today. We found a grocery store nearby to get pastries and pudding for dessert.

We stayed in a regular hotel last night. It was a lot more expensive and not nearly as delightful. But the hotel did give us a room at 9:30 yesterday morning which was great. We found a place near to it that made us breakfast. Lola la Reina del Raxo. https://www.raxerialola.com/

We went back to Lola’s this morning for breakfast. When we walked in, the man behind the bar remembered us and told us what our order had been. Of course, we had the same. We liked the place a lot. Excellent fried eggs and toast, excellent coffee, friendly service, and 80s and 90s MTV on the TV. We were rocking to very young Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse, Beyonce, Lady Gaga. When we got up to pay today, the man walked over to a shelf and handed Charlie his glasses. Charlie had left them there yesterday and did not even know they were missing since he uses them only for distance. (Charlie did say, as we were walking to the bar, “Hm, I forgot to bring my glasses; oh well, we aren’t going far.”) We were flabbergasted that we happened to go back to the same place and the man remembered us and Charlie got his glasses back even before he knew they were missing.

Sidenote: Last year on the Camino, Charlie lost a part of glasses (progressives) as well. That time we never found them.