#23 Balloons

Camino de Santiago

After I had already sent out yesterday’s newsletter, we had a lovely vegetarian meal at our Albergue, with most of the vegetables grown right in their garden. You donated/paid whatever you felt was appropriate. Our hosts treated us to a musical grace/prayer before dinner

(The owners dog is preganant, and he said “in two months we will have many poopies” and “if anyone wants poopies, please let me know”)

The next day, October 6th, was Terry’s birthday. Our friend Eloise turned thirty 4 days ago, and she gave me two packs of balloons left over from her celebration. So we blew those up (man was I happy to get them out of my pack, they were so heavy) and attached them to our packs in honor of Terry’s big day as we left for Astorga.

A pilgrim passed us and said:

Pilgrim: What’s with the balloons?

Drew: It’s our friends birthday.

Pilgrim: Yeah?

Drew: Yeah, he’s way up ahead, and we’re just back here looking stupid.

Pilgrim: It’s working.

No sunrise pictures today… it rained instead.

We’ve seen these lichens take over a forest several times. Creepy and cool.

The sun tried to come out, Drew was hangry, and then this Oasis appeared. At least thats the name Terry gave it.

At the Oasis: All for donation… pay what you can. It was awesome.

An then sun broke through, and it turned our demeanors around quickly (and the oasis food helped too)

At the bottom of a big hill, we were met by the Guardia Civilia (police) of Astorga. Steve panicked, as he is wanted by Interpol. turns out they were not here to take Steve to the European version of the hoosegow, but instead they were greeting pilgrims, and the male officer delighted in showing off the statue of a pilgrim, who, when you pressed the right water valve, water springs out of the statue’s gourd he was holding and into the statues mouth.

I saw she had a stamp (cello) so I asked her to stamp my credential

Here’s this huge ramp structure outside of Astorga that you MUST use to cross a single railroad line! Terry measured it at .15 miles. Safety first, but really??! (There was no way around it)

Entering Astorga we found this nice Roman villa in town that had a pretty good mosaic. The Museo Romano was not worth the 3 euros.

Astorga has cool bell ringing puppets who strike the bell on the hour.

Here’s the boys calling/texting home in the square while we waited for the 2PM striking of the bell. Oh yeah, of course we missed it. Two dings goes quick! (We did see it at 8PM though)

Astorga has yet another outstanding cathedral! The Bishops seat is here, so its a big deal.

Inside was a great museum. Here’s a piece of “The True Cross” inside the gold decoration, if you have never seen one before.

The altar. They also had a VR room which allowed you “fly” like a drone throughout the cathedral. It really adds so much to be able to see the sheer enormity of the structure.

Here’s the VR room. Right next to some dead saints.

The organ in the cathedral has over 2800 pipes. Crazy.

Outside the cathedral is the bishops palace designed by Gaudi. And next to that are some intact Roman walls!

If you’ve seen Gaudi’s work, you can see his touch here

A great park outside the Bishop’s Palace, with the walls running for hundreds of yards.

Believe it or not, this history nerd was museumed out, and i did not tour the Gaudi building. Sorry. But on the way home I did find this 5 stories tall mural!

For the past two weeks, Drew had been working his What’s App magic staying in touch with the close friends we had made along The Way. And he got them to change their schedules and meet us in Astorga for a surprise birthday dinner for Terry! Laney took a bus to get here, Matt and Miranda hiked a long day to get to a city with a train so they could train back to us, and both Nickie and Linguist Matt made special arrangements to get here.

Oh yes, Terry was surprised. He popped into the bar in the square, and when he came out, we had a table full of his Camino friends! It was very touching that they made the effort to see him! We had a great dinner with several glances our way by the other Spanish customers.

Starting with Steve, Linguist matt, Drew, Andy, Laney,Nickie,Terry, Miranda, Matt

(We gave the inflated balloons away to a sweet 5 year old girl who had by eyeing them for sometime)

Sometimes you just really connect with the some people in a short time.

Oct. 7, 2024, 3:53 p.m.

The Cuatro Amigos