The walk yesterday was dubbed "The Day of Bad Food". Everywhere we went, our meals were yucky. It all started with difficulty finding breakfast in León. It continued with a sandwich that tasted like toothpaste and another sandwich that was totally different from what we had ordered. Dinner was also highly mediocre that night.
We chose to walk along the path that follows the road (aka The Senda) for this stage. It was incredibly boring, but it allowed us to continue on further than the planned distance for the day. We got to this stretch and there was white fluff falling from the trees! It reminded us of snow, but with a cotton-like texture.
That night, we got to our albergue and found it pretty empty. Not a single one of our friends had traveled the same path that we had. Before supper Abe started having eye issues (they had been itchy all day due to allergies). The tear duct first began to swell..then the white of his eye..then a jelly like substances started forming in his eye. With no wifi and no friends we felt helpless and I thought for sure we would end up at a hospital. I got on the one, insanely slow Windows computer at the albergue and researched what to do. We got some antihistamine in him and put a cold compress on the eye and eventually the swelling did go down. Abe never has allergies back home, so for him to have such a severe reaction was quite terrifying. Luckily he woke up this morning with only a slight redness to his eyes (no swelling at all). The first pharmacy we ran across today we purchased more antihistamine, allergy eye drops, and advil. I hope that nothing like this ever happens again while we are here...Dealing with what could have been a medical emergency on our own not fun at all. The only friends we made last night were an Italian couple celebrating 10 years of marriage by walking the Camino. They thought I had hit Abe in the eye, thus causing the redness (seriously?). They made us take an after dinner shot to calm down and "help digestion".
The walk today continued along the Senda before vearing into the desert (it was a million degrees and not shady at all) and eventually back into the hills.
We ran across some sweet hippies about 5 KM out of Astorga who a gave us juice and fruit. One sat and played his guitar while the other flitted around giving pilgrims what they had. They had an Aussie puppy who was so hot he didn't hardly move when I was petting him.
We eventually drug ourselves into Astorga, a town where we had originally planned to rest. Since we just had a rest day in León we made the decision to keep going a save the rest day for another time. Astorga is a larger town nestled under mountains. It has some very cool things to see in it and if wehad more time we may have stopped.
There is the cathedral, which wins the award for most altarpieces.
They also have the "Hey girl, hey" Jesus.
There is also the Palacio Espisocpal, which was designed by Gaudí.
I love Gaudí's work and was very excited to see some in this city.
Tonight I also got to eat steamed veggies for the first time since I left the States. I was beyond excited to get to eat a giant plate of broccoli (probably a little too excited, haha).
We begin entering the mountains tomorrow and will soon reach the highest point on the Camino. Wish us luck!! (trust me, we need it)
Buen Camino!
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