Tue Oct 11. Santander. Rest Day.
Our accommodation in Santander, Alojamientos Caliber caters to Camino pilgrims. We booked a double room with attached bathroom, but they have a dormitory with 6 bunk beds. They have a full set up kitchen with electric range top, microwave, refrigerator, utensils, plateware, flatware, etc. And the included breakfast was probably one the best we had in such an accommodation setting – cereals, juice, toast, cheese, ham, yogurt, coffee/tea. Further, there’s a supermarket within 5 minutes. We luck out.
It had rained overnight, and was drizzling when we finally got to breakfast at about 8am. First thing was that we felt lucky to have covered the coastal route yesterday. Second thing was that based on more rain, we felt lucky that this was a Rest Day. However, it seems that weather forecast in the USA are much more accurate. It didn’t rain the rest of the day, just overcast with intermediary bright sunshine.
Rest Days allow one to catch up on the necessary but mundane aspects of traveling. This includes doing the laundry in a laundromat (within minutes from Caliber), booking the next several nights of accommodation, ensuring bills back home are paid, etc!
Being a planner/organizer, it’s refreshing to let the mind ease into a ‘wandering’ mindset. To just explore the city without that list of must-cover/do. In that way, we let what will be, come about. And what is missed, is probably not needed for the rejuvenation of mind and spirit.
Let me define “luck” as something that happens by chance. Thus, as we wandered about the area near the historical section of the city, we stumbled across the Sacred Heart Church, which is a Jesuit church. It’s a lovely church where we spent some time in prayer.
Some other lucky instances – as we backtracked to find the restaurant with the menu del dia, we came across a hotel that had such a menu. Latter looked much more appealing than what we were backtracking to, and it was only Euro2 more per person (total was Euro 16 per person). We made a reservation, and probably had one of the best daily menu on the Camino. It was at Hotel Coliseum – The first course options were about 20% shy of an entree portion! Our second course order of grilled fish had two types of fish, salmon and cod! And the other second course order of fish in batter had like 6-7 small fish in batter. We aim to have a small dinner! We also had better (dry) weather than the weather forecast had indicated this morning!
I won’t bore you with the other sights of Santander that are well written up. Suffice to say, to truly rest, one must not have an agenda packed day!
The longest balcony on the Camino Frances. Abandoned house.
One can ride horses from Las Herrerias to O Cebreiro, a distance of 7.1 km. My GPS App indicated it would take 3.5 hours. I put it down to a glitch in the App. I was sadly wrong.
This tree’s circumference was one and a half to two times that of the surrounding trees. It’s much older.
At the entrance into Las Herrerias. The man made leaves are rolled up pieces of paper, presumably with written down dreams.
Have you observed a truly contented cow?
The horses were coming down as we were making our way up. I would recommend if there’s heavy rain the past few days!
This is how muddy the trails were. Not to mention the occasional piles of horse dung. And rivulets flowing down. And rocks and stones. Our pace was reduced to 2 plus km per hour. My guestimate is the muddy rocky stretch would be about 4.5 km or so!
Was it a co-incidence that we had the Purer Version chat with Nicky before this 3+ hours experience of a muddy uphill slog?
The marker indicating we had entered Galicia.
Journey Within 