Camino de Santiago
Question: Would you pay $5.60 for a train ride from Sahagun to Leon and cut out a good 30 miles of walking through fields?
Answer: Yes I would, and yes we did.
We caught the 8:34a train to Leon, and 45 minutes later we were in the bustling city of Leon. This might be our favorite city so far… even better than Burgos. For those non-lovers of all thingsRoman, the town bar comes from the Latin Legios/Legion for one of the Roman Legions stationed here. Sadly, not for cool lions jumping out of manhole covers
Off the train, we had an amazingly cheap breakfast of 2 fried eggs, 5 pieces of bacon, and a cafe con leche for $5.50. Can’t beat it.
And fortunately we were right across the street from the Museo de Leon, so the Philistines I am traveling with could get some culture. (OK, they were willing, but we each had our part of the museum we cruised through)
Turns out it was a festival weekend in Leon and they had a medieval fair going on right outside the museum.
Oh wait a minute, steve wants to write something:
Hi all, Andy only giving me 40 seconds as to not ruin his newslettttttt
And now here’s Terry:
Andy said walk this alternative path even though it is longer. “We will avoid a road walk.” Well ask him if we had a road walk today. ;)
And now back to the real newsletter: Leon really sprang to life on a Friday! We walked through a great pedestrian only street to turn a corner and Bam! There’s the cathedral on a main square! It was fantastic.
Here’s the inside. Fantastic Gothic architecture!
Somehow, even with taking two days in Burgos, and riding a train, we met up with Eloise, Marie, Linguist Matt and Solis… all Camino friends from past towns .
Drew and I went to a thrift store
where he bought a military key chain, and i got Lone Ranger comic book written in Spanish. There was not a price tag on anything! You just brought it up front and the owner threw a price at you.
On the same walking trip, Drew stopped at a shoe store to get a new pair of hiking shoes/sneakers since his were wearing thin. Well Drew has big feet. So a trip to one store turned into a trip to two stores. Then three. At the fourth store, the owner called another shoe store (a 20 minute walk away) and yes, they had one pair of Hoka’s in his size. They were closing soon, so hurry over. We met with success and Drew now has a bright red pair of new Hoka’s. So bright that we have Drew lead the way out of town in the mornings because the red shoes just glow. It saves our headlamp batteries immensely. So all told, on what should have been a rest day of casual sightseeing, I walked 23,700 steps. Crazy.
Oh good, Drew’s back. We all love him so much and really value his input. He deserves extra Christmas gifts this year from the family, just a suggestion.
Hi folks, Drew here. Leon was cool. The cathedral was astounding, even for one as church-ed out as I am. (Seriously every town in this country has like minimum of 2 and we MUST enter each one, apparently…)
Leon also had a cool museum full of Roman stuff. That was neat. Did Andy mention hiking an Additional 3 miles through the city to find me new shoes? He’s pretty great like that.
Also we hiked 18.5 miles today and I felt every single stone. My feet hurt. Drew out.
A wonderful day! But busy busy! I’ll let the Lone Ranger say it best:
