Breakfast is included at my hotel, and eating it in silence was bliss after five days of noise at every meal. That was the one big problem at Belmonte - the longer the meal went on, the louder it got, until everyone was leaning over their plates to hear each other. The room was just not accoustically good. Jorge picked me up after breakfast, and we went back to their place to wait for Gema and Paula to be ready to go.
First stop, Astorga. Astorga is on the Camino, and is a popular beginning spot for pilgrims. It is clearly geared toward Camino tourists and pilgrims, with many souvenir shops as well as every kind of gear you could possibly want if you are walking (and probably some that you don't want). We saw a number of pilgrims on the street, too. We first visited the bishop's palace, right next to the cathedral, which was designed by Gaudi. It is filled with beautiful stained glass, tilework, frescos, and religious art pieces, as well as a museum in the basement of sarcophaguses (sarcophagi?), Arab and Roman coins and tools, and stonework (statues and headstones). One headstone in particular caught my eye. It was supposed to say "Invicto Deo", but the final O was kind of squeezed in there at the end. I have done that same thing a million times when writing a sign, or writing on the whiteboard, so I can just picture some Roman stone carver getting to "Deo" and thinking, "Oh, crap, I spaced it wrong". And you can't just erase stone carving to do it over.
And from the Small World department:
While we were in the bishop's palace, I heard English being spoken, and I asked the woman where she was from. She said, "Arizona, in the States", but she also said she grew up in Wisconsin. Her friend (from Philadelphia) came around the corner, and asked where I was from. When I told her, she said her daughter married someone from Bloomington, and they have lived in the Bloomington area a couple of different times! In fact, they still live in the Bloomington area. The two women are starting their Camino tomorrow, and hoping the rain will stop soon. Astorga to Santiago is about 200 miles.
We saw a large number of people in wheelchairs and scooters, and a large contingent of blind people in Astorga, and we wondered why that was. I'm not sure how I could go about finding out, but it was strange. Also strange was the place where we had lunch. It was a local place that someone on the street recommended, but when we walked back to our table, passing a Route 66 sign, among other things, it looked just like the BBQ place where Cathy, Megan, and I ate in NYC! It was so weird - we were even sitting at the "same" table. The restaurant was called Bar El Uno.
After lunch, we drove farther on to see what had been the largest Roman gold mine in Spain. It was mined over 400 years (we think). Or maybe 200, but even so! We visited an interpretive center where the audio guides told us about the area (famous for chestnuts, grapes and fish), and about conserving natural resources. Then we drove up a mountain to a place where we could look down over the gold mine. The place is called Las Medulas. It looks like a natural formation of red rocks, but it is actually the remains of a larger mountain in the Aquilianos range. The Romans ran over 600 kilometers of waterways to the area and filled the mountain with so much water that the pressure literally blew the mountain apart. It was part of a much larger mining area and much of it is overgrown, but these red peaks remain visible. When we parked the car, we then had to walk up to the observation point. Jorge said it was something like 600 meters up, but he failed to mention that about 400 of them were vertical. There I was again, puffing away behind them, but it was totally worth it when I saw the view! Jorge, Gema, and Paula also went into the tunnel through the mountain to look out from another direction.
We made one last stop before heading back to Mieres, a place called Castillo Cornatel. It was a castle ruin high on a hill. Up we went again, only to discover that it had closed for the day a bit early. The sign said it didn't close until 8:00, but was locked up tight at 7:30. There didn't really appear to be too much to see there, from the inside, but it was impressive from the outside. Even after all of that walking and hill-climbing, my knees don't feel a bit bad, but I am tired. It seemed like a long drive back, particularly when it started raining and got dark. We drove back through an area full of coal mines which are now idle due to the lower cost of importing coal from elsewhere. The little local villages are dying, though, because the miners no longer live there.
I'm not sure what is on the agenda for tomorrow. It will depend, in part, on the weather. While it didn't rain a lot at any time, it was cold and windy today, and might stay that way for awhile. Not pleasant weather to walk in, so we will just have to see.
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