Today Paddy, Rebekah, and I went to Palencia so that they could file/update some paperwork. Paddy got sent around to several places before being told that he didn't need the card his doctor told him to get, and as for Rebekah, she wasn't able to get a spot waiting in line, so she wasn't too pleased. It seems to be a universal practice to treat immigrants like crap. It makes you more considerate of people that have moved to the US when the roles are reversed.
Since things didn't take as long as anticipated, we spent most of the late morning and early afternoon wandering around the city. We saw the Cathedral, and after a coffee we were able to take a tour of the crypts, the cloister, and the museum. The museum boasts an early Greco painting of St. Sebastien. There was also an interesting work of art that requires the viewer to look at it from the side – otherwise all you see is a portrait that's stretched too wide. It was really neat.
After the tour we stopped to get Paddy some new boots at a store that was having a sale. Just a couple store fronts down was one of those mechanical rides that children sit on. I kid you not, it was a replica of David the Gnome! It was hilarious, and I really wished I'd had a camera to snap a picture.
Before lunch we walked through Palencia's indoor market, which was extraordinarily clean. The butcher stalls had some really interesting things, but I was slightly disturbed staring straight into the eyes of a fully skinned sheep's (or perhaps they were goats) head. It wasn't like it was just a skull either – it had the eyeballs still inside of it. Further down at another meat stall there was a whole cavalry of them. In addition to those there were pig's feet, pig's snouts, pig's faces, innards, tongues, larynx (I don't know how to or even whether I should pluralize that), and a whole assortment of bizarre miscellany. On the upside, all the fish and produce was remarkable fresh!
We had lunch at a hotel restaurant not far from the Cathedral. Rebekah and I both had a platos cobination of croquettas, deep fried shrimp, and salad. Paddy had a tuna salad and then a nice piece of grilled salmon. For dessert I had flan, Paddy rice pudding, and Rebekah some sort of custard. Wine, water, and bread as per usual, accompanied the food. American's really ought to get into that habit! There was a TV playing near by, and amongst other things there was a short news cast of a 6-year-old that weighed 89 kilos (approximately 195 pounds!). It was interesting because it was a big deal – and yes, it is, but you'd never hear about something like that in the States. Also, I think Liz Taylor finally kicked the bucket today. They were airing a sort of montage of her career on the news. Who knows. I need to check the Oscar winners. I'm interested to see if Pan's Labyrinth won anything.
On the way home I napped for a bit, and when we got back into Moratinos we stopped by The Alamo to see if Sebastien needed anything. He asked me to help him move some wood that was too big for him to move alone, so I left off there and helped him shift it all to a different location. I got back to the house and decided I wanted to go into Sahagun. I asked Paddy to drive me in, and he dropped me off at the Hotel Posh (not it's real name – but it's the nicest hotel in Sahagun and the surrounding area). I walked to the Internet place and hopped on the Wifi for a bit. Checked email, Google'd some things I needed to find out, and talked to Draque for a short while on Trillian. I'm researching plants that Rebekah can put in her yard, and also I needed to do some more searching to figure out what's wrong with my cell phone. I think I found the solution, so in the next day or two I should be able to use the Movistar SIM chip that Rebekah has.
After I was finished using the Wifi, I started back to Moratinos. It's a 9km stretch between Sahagun and home – lucky for me I was wearing my boots. The walk back took about an hour and forty-five minutes, but it was tiring. It was a good start for training before I head out on the Camino. The longest distance I'll have to walk in a day is 38km, and I'm hoping by that point in the pilgrimage I'm used to walking for long distances. I think the worst part about the walk back though was that it was dark almost the entire way – I think walking in the daylight would be much simpler because you aren't concentrating so hard on not running into something, or tripping over a rock or a hole, and there's more to actually look at!
So now I've taken a shower – something I'm probably really going to miss when I'm all sweaty on the Camino and the place I stop for the night doesn't have a shower – and had a couple glasses of vino (in Spanish pronounced almost like “bino”) and a nice dish of pesto and spaghetti. So I think I'm going to turn in and rest my feet – tomorrow holds another day of who knows what, so it's probably best that I rest up.
Buenos noches.
No comments:
Post a Comment