We are into a routine of staying in one place for a few days to a week after we finish a Camino. Over the years we’ve stayed in Madrid, Lisbon, Gijón, A Coruña, Muxia, Oviedo, Llanes, Pontevedra, Vigo (plus Lucca when we walked on the Via Francigena in Italy). An interesting mixture of very large, very small, touristy, non-touristy towns. Our favorites so far have been Gijón (large but with a small walkable center and very non-touristy) and Llanes (tiny). Those are both on the Camino del Norte, on the Atlantic coast in northern Spain, with great walking along the ocean.
This year we chose Zamora. It sounded like a nice town and it was in a convenient location. No ocean walks but impressive river paths. Zamora is not among our favorites, but it has been a pleasant place to live for a week. In a way it doesn’t matter where we are. We love Spain so much and enjoy pretending to simply live here and do our usual routines. Of course, it’s impossible to really do that but we try.
Yesterday we walked to the Carrefour Supermarket. We liked the Carrefour grocery store in Palencia so decided it would be worth the 2 mile round trip walk to go to the one here. We were shocked how huge it was. It was inside a shopping mall. It had clothes and appliances, a little bit of everything, as well as food. In other words it was similar to a Walmart and nearly as large. No telling how many small businesses it has shut down. I fear it won’t be many years before the small neighborhood markets are gone here in Spain. Luckily we have a small DIA market a 3 minute walk from our apartment where we go every day. Strangely, for most things, we like the DIA food selection better than the Carrefour.
